Stratégies de faire face à la douleur chez des adolescents atteints de déficience intellectuelle

Our purpose is to better understand what strategies are used by intellectually disabled adolescents when coping with pain, in particular if they change their coping skills when turning 15, as do typical adolescents. The research participants were 56 adolescents aged from 13 to 17 years old (m = 15.3), including 28 adolescents with mild to moderate cognitive impairment and 28 typical adolescents matched in gender and chronological age. This study is qualitative and semi-structured interviews were used to focus on the subjective traits of the individual's experience. The distribution of the strategies given in interviews is significantly different in the two populations. Typical adolescents shift from strategies focused on emotion to strategies focused on the problem around age 15. This change in the distribution of the strategies based on age is not significant in adolescents with cognitive impairment. Thus, adolescents with intellectual disabilities have potential that seems to have been underestimated before but do not progress to more cognitively demanding pain coping strategies. In conclusion, the presence of a familiar person seems necessary to assist them in selecting and mobilizing an appropriate strategy, particularly when the pain is uncontrollable by the adolescent himself.