Thursday, March 27, 2008

Helmet for Self-Injurous Behavior

We were contacted by a Group Home that had a 30 year old man with severe mental disabilities which had some self-injurious behaviors. A couple times per week he would get upset and he would start slamming his head into the ground usually ending up in a bloody face or stitches. Typically the staff would jump on top of him and try to restrain him from harming himself which would only agitate him more and made it difficult for him to stop.
Through some brain storming we came up with an idea of a helmet that would protect him from harming himself when he does experience this behavior. We needed to create something that would allow him total protection of his face while allowing the staff to easily put this on him during his fits of rage.

We chose to purchase a street motorbike helmet and modify it.

We cut the helmet up the side and attached a hinge at the top that would allow the helmet to open up wide enough to get it over his head easily.

The buckles on the side allowed the helmet to latch shut when the helmet was closed. Staff would get on his back while he was headbanging and could put the front of the helmet over his face and then shut the back portion of the helmet to close it. We installed some ABS plastic over the face shield for added protection and also to create a dark environment for him that would help him calm down to stop the headbanging. Instead of three or four staff members jumping on him to restrain him (and possibly injuring themselves), one person was able to get this on his head very quickly and then let him bang until he settled down. The combination of the darkness and that he was not causing pain to himself greatly shortened the amount of time that he continued his behavior and almost completely eliminated any injury to himself.



Kent Remund, UCAT

1 comment:

Meadowlark's Mind said...

Great blog, Kent-- I will tie it to my blog as well. Stay tuned.