Better evidence
and better practice in psychological therapies for adults with intellectual
disabilities
A new book I edited with colleagues John
Taylor, Bill Lindsay and Chris Hatton was published this month by
Wiley-Blackwell – Psychological Therapies for Adults with Intellectual
Disabilities
There are excellent chapters in this book
that balance description of research evidence with sage practical advice about
how to adapt psychological therapies for the benefit of adults with
intellectual disabilities who may mental health problems. We hope that the
chapters in this book will help clinicians and services to think about how they
offer support to adults with intellectual disabilities and also to understand
the state of the evidence for a wide variety of psychology therapies.
For all psychological therapeutic
modalities, it is clear that the quality of research evidence of effectiveness
for adults with intellectual disability is poor. People with intellectual
disability and their families deserve more and higher quality research.
However, it is important also to carry out decent quality research providing
evidence of outcomes for people with intellectual disability and mental health
problems but from a practice perspective. Like in the field of autism (see http://profhastings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/autism-and-evidence-4-does-aba-work-for.html)
we cannot wait forever for researchers to generate the highest quality randomized
controlled trial evidence. In addition, many of the important research
questions are not simply about whether a
therapeutic intervention can work for people with intellectual disability. What
may be equally or more important are questions about how we organize health
service systems to identify those in need, what competencies clinicians need to
work effectively with adults with ID and mental health problems, and how services
should be delivered on a large scale to help to reduce the significant mental
health inequalities faced by people with intellectual disability.
The final chapter in the new book discusses
some of these evidence issues:
