Having a clear out

[ged]

I know of a gentleman with a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome and depression who goes through phases of purging his belongings. He asks staff to store them, gives them to his family, and one one memorable occasion tried to put items back onto the shelves at the supermarket, a kind of inverted shoplifter. His room ends up bare, with hardly a change of clothes.

It may or may not be linked to his mood, he is fairly inscrutable. He will not answer questions about it, and is generally withdrawn.

Has anyone come across this, and did you figure out why it was happening, and what to do about it? Any educated guesses would also be appreciated.

This is not a client I have responsibility or input into, but I find his behaviour quite bizarre, and just wandered what others thought about it.

[becky]

I also have had experiece of dealing with a client who was on the autistic spectum who regularly would discard her belongings into a bin when she was upset.

The belongings that she would discard were the ones that we percieved as being the most precious and sentimental to her including family pictures and items to do with her religion.

It wasn't until I attended a very difficult care plan meeting that I realised that some of the distress that she was experiencing stemed from the intense family relationships.

As a coping strategy we looked after these items to give her the option of having them back. Once her period of anxiety was over she did want these items back. We also managed to get additional funding for this client so that we could focus on the more positive aspects of this clients' life. This was not easy and took a lot of time to get agreed, but these strategies calmed down the situation and enabled us to focus on helping the person and not the behaviours. This then reduced the times when she was upset.

The discarding of belongings was just one of the challenging behavious that she did, but we found that all of her anxiety over time reduced and she was much happier.