Adult Social Care Glossary, v 0.6

In this guideline, this is used to mean the tendency to attribute all behavioural, emotional, physical and social issues to a person's learning disability or a pre-existing condition, while overlooking the possibility that they could be symptoms of other conditions or difficulties. An example would be attributing challenging behaviour to a learning disability when it could be a reaction to abdominal pain, which in turn might be symptomatic of a physical health problem.