Designing Post-Trauma Self-Regulation Apps for People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

In the US people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) comprise one of the most likely groups to experience traumatic life events. These experiences often produce negative effects (e.g., stress, anxiety, grief, numbing, etc.) that need to be managed. Methods such as emotional self-regulation are often used to help people cope when these effects present themselves post-trauma. In recent years mobile-computing-devices-based apps have been increasingly used to help the general population with autonomous self-regulation. However, none of these is designed for people with I/DD or is cognizant of the trauma they experience in their lives. We interviewed eight (8) practitioners at a trauma services organization that, among other things, helps people with I/DD learn and practice post-trauma self-regulation. The goal of the interviews is to understand what it would take to build post-trauma self-regulation apps for people with I/DD. Based on the interview responses we argue for a set of guidelines, based on the social work practice of trauma-informed care, to design post-trauma self-regulation apps for people with I/DD.