Education - professional practice

This guide is designed for:

• Anyone supporting students in local authority schools, academy trusts or independent education provisions
• Those working in mainstream or specialist schools/academies, alternative provisions and further or higher education provisions
• Headteachers, senior leadership teams and SENCOs
• Education practitioners and support staff; primary, secondary, post-16 to adult

When working with students of any age, understanding PDA will help educators tailor their communication, the learning environment and support plans, to reduce stress and achieve better outcomes for practitioners, students and their parent/carers. 

This content is best read through in the order above, and navigated in order using arrows at the bottom of pages – but if you want to jump to a particular section you can do so using the buttons above. You can also access a short downloadable resource here which summarises how PDA can present in school and offers some helpful approaches.

Pathological demand avoidance (PDA) is widely regarded as a profile on the autism spectrum, characterised by:

• An overwhelming need to avoid everyday demands, often due to heightened anxiety.
• Use of social strategies to elude demands, including distraction, negotiation, procrastination, or flattery. 
• Surface sociability, masking deeper social understanding challenges and heightened anxiety.
• Rapid mood changes and impulsivity, with swings from compliance to intense avoidance and extreme distressed behaviours.
• Ease in role-play and pretending, as a means of control or escape.
• Obsessive behaviours, frequently focused on people or relationships.
• Need for control as a way of reducing anxiety
• Intolerance of uncertainty, to a greater extent than the general Autistic community

You can find detailed information about the profile and its characteristics here. 

PDA is not recognised in major diagnostic manuals like the DSM-5 or ICD-11. However, it is increasingly accepted in UK clinical and academic settings. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) does not provide separate guidelines for PDA. This means identification is dependent on expert clinicians and local pathways (Christie et al., 2022). As a result, many PDAers may have had multiple prior diagnoses or be in the process of reassessment. 

Some adults and older students may also self-identify as a PDAer if there have been limited opportunities for diagnosis and validating their experience is important.

If you want your education setting to be at the forefront of great practice around PDA – we can help. Our training & consultancy shares practical tools and the theory behind them – presented by people with experience in settings like yours. Many of our courses are CPD accredited too. You can find them here.