Jean O'Hara

Intellectual Disability and Ill Health: A Review of the Evidence

What do you do to start reading intellectual disability and ill health? Searching the book that you love to read first or find an interesting book that will make you want to read? Everybody has difference with their reason of reading a book. Actuary, reading habit must be from earlier. Many people may be love to read, but not a book. Its not fault. Someone will be bored to open the thick book with small words to read. In more, this is the real condition. So do happen probably with this intellectual disability and ill health.

Attending to the health needs of people with intellectual disability: quality standards

People with intellectual disabilities remain among the most vulnerable members of society and often face many barriers to healthcare. They experience major health problems and risks yet pay a disability penalty, the result of social exclusion, discrimination and isolation. If public health strategies are to address the physical and mental health needs of people with intellectual disabilities, attention needs to be given to their particular health profile. Health targets, quality standards and outcome measures must attend to their needs, for the measure of civilisation is how well we treat those who are deemed more vulnerable and less able in society. This article highlights how these issues are being addressed in westernised countries and some of the dilemmas and challenges faced by health care organisations.

Standards and quality measures for services for people with intellectual disabilities.

Purpose of review In our modern, performance managed National Health Service, quality has become a key target. Quality assurance has become a statutory duty and the National Health Service is inundated with policy documents and performance measures in most areas of mainstream healthcare. Performance against such measures will be monitored by powerful independent regulatory bodies. It is therefore timely to look at what specific quality measures there are for services for people with intellectual disability. Recent findings Tension exists as to the need for developing specific targets for the population with intellectual disabilities when the philosophy of care is for real social inclusion where ‘all means all’. To what extent will existing quality standards for mental health services suffice when we know that often people with intellectual disabilities have real issues accessing these services? This paper highlights published quality measures and standards from primary care through mainstream secondary care and specialist mental health services. It also discusses the policy context and current development of regulatory standards as these continue to evolve. Summary Evidence for meeting quality standards will increasingly dominate the delivery and funding of healthcare in the National Health Service.

MHiLD: a model of specialist mental health services for people with learning disabilities

There are high rates of emotional, behavioural and psychiatric problems (Cooper et al, 2007) in the learning disability population. This paper describes the Mental Health in Learning Disabilities (MHiLD) service for adults with learning disabilities in four South London boroughs. This service has been in operation in two South East London boroughs from 1982, and was extended to a third in 1999 and a fourth in 2006.

Why should I care about gender

Women have been discriminated against throughout history. Despite international efforts, there remain significant inequalities between men and women. In some countries women are still deprived of fundamental human rights. This article looks at the published literature on gender as it affects individual vulnerability and risk, and planning, organisation and delivery of health care, with specific focus on the mental health and learning disabilities literature. It acknowledges the important differences between the life experiences and social realities of men and women with learning disabilities, and discusses them in the context of recent government policy and guidance. It calls for urgent gender‐specific research to understand the key issues facing men and women with learning disabilities, and a rights‐based approach to access to education, health care and a competent and informed workforce.

Policy implementation in England: developments to meet the mental health needs of people with learning disabilities

In the last decade we have witnessed much debate and activity around the provision of mental health services for people with learning disabilities in England. This article looks not only at current initiatives to improve mental health care from around England, but also places them within a policy context. Unfortunately there are areas that still fail to provide a basic care standard, some of which has been reported throughout the media from recent investigations. Where this is the case, we outline the responses and actions that have been put in place to address these issues.To maintain a momentum for positive change for the mental health care of people with learning disabilities, there now needs to be cooperation between services that traditionally have not worked together for the benefit of this client group. Before an equality of mental health service provision, in line with national standards, can be realised the traditional views and values of service providers and commissioners will need to be challenged and tuned to the needs of this group of people.

A Learning-Disabled Woman who had been Raped: A Multi-Agency Approach

People with learning disabilities are vulnerable to sexual exploitation and abuse1. Moreover, when incidents occur, the victims are sometimes perceived to make poor witnesses and the cases do not come to court2. Support and care may demand a multi-agency approach3,4, as illustrated by the following case.

Psychiatric and mental state assessment in learning disabilities

Mental health assessment in people with learning disability can be a challenging process for clinicians. The more severe the cognitive impairment and level of learning disability, the less likely it is that the clinician can reliably confirm the diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder. Coordinated, multi‐modal interdisciplinary team assessment is the way forward, as it draws together the bio‐psychosocial model of interviewing and mental health care planning. In this article we go through the psychiatric assessment structure and highlight the differences in assessing people with learning disability compared with their peers in the general population. We give special consideration to mental health assessments in emergency settings, and to people with challenging behaviour.

Mental Health Needs of Women with Learning Disabilities: Services can be Organised to Meet the Challenge

The Department of Health recognises that there are differences in the family and social context of women’s and men’s lives, and that they have a consequence for how mental ill-health presents and is treated (DoH, 2002). So what does it mean to be a woman with learning disabilities? What does it mean for her to also have mental health needs? Will she be able to access services that are sensitive to her to her situation, to her life experiences, to her aspirations and to her uniqueness as a woman? Will the systems that are in place to plan, deliver and monitor services take account of her and her individual needs? WHAT WOMEN ARE SAYING

How can mental health clinicians, working in intellectual disability services, meet the spiritual needs of their service users?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify approaches that mental health clinicians, working in intellectual disability services, can adopt to ensure the spiritual needs of their service users are met. Design/methodology/approach – A narrative literature review examining original research, expert opinion pieces and book chapters was undertaken. To broaden the perspective of the paper, publications from different academic areas were reviewed including intellectual disabilities, mental health, neurodevelopmental disorders, general health and spirituality literature. Findings – The main principles of spiritual assessment tools from the general health literature can be applied to this group. However, the literature would suggest that certain approaches are of particular importance in intellectual disabilities mental health including advocating for service users to attend the religious services they wish to and working collaboratively with families and carers when addressing spiritual issues. Research ...