PhD Position: De-escalation

Aggression in residential treatment settings remains a significant challenge for care professionals. An aggressive incident involving a client is not solely determined by what occurs in the moment but should be understood as the outcome of a complex interplay of factors. In this regard, characteristics of care professionals play an important role in these interacting processes, including psychophysiological indicators of wellbeing, such as insufficient sleep, cumulative stress and limited recovery, as well as previous experiences with incidents and the broader team, managerial and ward contexts.

In recent years, there has been growing interest in the use of wearable technologies, such as smartwatches and biosensors that continuously measure psychophysiological signals, to better capture these dynamic processes. Such technologies may offer new opportunities to gain insight into the interaction between psychophysiological states and behaviour, and could potentially contribute to...