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The Assessment of Basic Learning Abilities (ABLA) is a tool that is used to assess the learning ability of individuals with intellectual disability (ID) and children with autism. The ABLA was recently revised and is now referred to as the ABLA-Revised (ABLA-R). A self-instructional manual was prepared to teach individuals how to administer the ABLA-R (DeWiele, Martin, Martin, Yu, & Thomson, 2011). Using a modified multiple-baseline design across a pair of university students, and replicated across four pairs, we evaluated the effectiveness of the ABLA-R self-instructional manual for teaching the students how to administer the ABLA-R. Each student: (a) after examining a brief description of the ABLA-R, attempted to administer the ABLA-R to a confederate role-playing an individual with ID (Baseline); (b) studied the ABLA-R self-instructional manual (Training); and (c) re-attempted to administer the ABLA-R to a confederate (Post-Training Assessment). Participants who achieved at least 90% accuracy in conducting the ABLA-R in their Post-Training Assessment then administered the ABLA-R to an individual with ID in a Generalization Assessment. Although additional research is needed, our results suggest that the self-instructional manual is an effective tool for training individuals to accurately administer the ABLA-R.

The admission of people suffering from psychiatric and neurocognitive disorders to euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (E/PAS) in some European and non-European countries represents a controversial issue. In some countries, the initial limitation of E/PAS to cases of severe physical illness with poor prognosis in the short term has been overcome, as it was considered discriminatory; thus, E/PAS has also been made available to subjects suffering from mental disorders. This decision has raised significant ethical questions regarding the capacity and freedom of self-determination; the family, social, and economic contexts; the social consideration of the sense of dignity and the pressure on the judgment of one's personal value; the contextual therapeutic possibilities; the identification of figures involved in the validation and application; as well as the epistemological definitions of the clinical conditions in question. To these issues must be added the situation of legislative vacuum peculiar to different countries and the widespread lack of effective evaluation and control systems. Nonetheless, pessimistic indicators on global health status, availability of care and assistance, aging demographics, and socioeconomic levels suggest that there may be further pressure toward the expansion of such requests. The present paper aims to trace an international overview with the aim of providing ethical support to the debate on the matter. Precisely, the goal is the delimitation of foundations for clinical practice in the complex field of psychiatry between the recognition of the irreversibility of the disease, assessment of the state of physical and mental suffering, as well as the possibility of adopting free and informed choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]