LO2
1.
Aggressive behaviour is behaviour that causes physical or emotional harm to others, or threatens to. It ranges from different aspects from verbal abuse to the damaging of a person’s personal property. People with aggressive behaviour tend to be irritable, impulsive and restless. Aggressive behaviour is often done on purpose, it violates social norms and causes relationship breakdowns. Having an emotional problem is the most common cause of aggressive behaviour. Having occasional outbursts of aggression is normal. It stems from an inability to control your own behaviour or from a misunderstanding of what behaviour is appropriate. Aggressive behaviour can be a reaction for example if someone gives you a fright you first thought is to hit them. It can also be proactive for example intentionally punching someone in the face for no reason. There are a variety of things that can cause aggressive behaviour these include,
Family structure
Relationships with others
Societal or socioeconomic factors
Individual characteristics
Health conditions
Psychiatric issues
Life experiences
In adults, aggression can develop from bad life experiences or mental illness. People who suffer from depression, anxiety or post-traumatic-stress disorder unintentionally can display aggressive behaviour as a result to their condition. People without a medical or emotional disorder often show aggressive behaviour as a result to frustration. For someone to work through aggressive behaviour they need to understand the primary cause and underlying problem. It’s mostly common to treat aggressive behaviour or reduce it with psychotherapy for example cognitive behavioural therapy. This teaches the person how to control their behaviour and helps them to develop coping mechanisms and the ability to asses’ consequences of their behaviour. 312
2.
One trigger that can produce aggressive behaviour is pain. A service user with dementia has the exact same needs as anyone else including comfort, stimulation, emotional wellbeing and being free from pain. Due to a service user living with dementia they are unable to recognise their needs, know how to meet or communicate with carers to get help with meeting them. This can cause them to act in what is seen as a challenging way, including aggression. This type of aggressive behaviour could be their way of meeting that need, their attempt at communicating it, or the outcome of the unmet need. For example there is a service user within my placement that gets very uncomfortable from sitting down to much so whenever he is sat on a seat he keeps trying to get up but the problem being that he can’t walk himself he needs assistants from 2 care staff, there for is you sit beside him trying to get him to calm down he grabs your arms tries to scratch you etc. which is obviously seen as aggressive behaviour but the underlying cause is that he is getting sore from sitting and because he can walk he is getting annoyed. Another trigger that can produce aggressive behaviour is anxiety. Anxiety is associated with fear, people don’t often relate anxiety with anger. Anxiety is stereotyped as causing shyness and people struggling to be social around other people, this is true in some cases. In other cases anxiety can provoke an aggressive, violent response. Anxiety activates the “fight or flight” response which is designed to keep you safe from danger and is only supposed occur when faced with fear. While the fight or flight response doesn’t necessarily cause fighting it does prepare your body for a fight, so that those that are slightly more prone to fighting feel allot more angry and aggressive. Evidence has suggested that anxiety only triggers aggression in those that already had a tendency towards aggression so controlling it may prove to be difficult and not enough. 341
3.
When
