Functional relationships between remote complex events and challenging behavior

We treat real persons in real, complex environments, not in simplified laboratory environments. All patients have a complex history, and have been influenced by an endless myriad of events. Only a tiny part of them are accessible to for example experimental analyses. We must take this into consideration when functionally assessing challenging behavior. This means that natural observations of patients in their environments, including talking with the sufficiently verbal ones, as well as looking for uncertain, but possibly significant, past and present events, should become a part of functional assessments. This point will, hopefully both clearly and convincingly, be backed by clinical examples.