Severe Aggressive and Self-Destructive Behavior: The Myth of the Nonaversive Treatment of Severe Behavior

In the spring of 1991, the Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD) sponsored a conference hosted by the Institute for Disabilities Studies of the University of Minnesota. The conference brought experts together to discuss the diagnosis and treatment of destructive behavior in developmental disabilities. The conference was an extension of the 1989 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Consensus Development Conference (see Foxx, chap. 28, this volume).