PREVALENCE AND CAUSATION OF MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS IN PEOPLE WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES
المؤلف:
PAUL MALORET
المصدر:
Caring for People with Learning Disabilities
الجزء والصفحة:
P75-C5
2025-10-10
251
PREVALENCE AND CAUSATION OF MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS IN PEOPLE WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES
The mental health needs of people with learning disabilities have only been on the learning disability healthcare agenda for the past 15–20 years. Reid (1994) suggests that historically it was thought that people with learning disabilities did not have the intellectual or cognitive ability to suffer from a mental health disorder. Any noticeable changes in their behavior were interpreted as part of their learning disability and, on the unusual occasion that signs of mental illness were noted, they were passed on to the local general psychiatric services, as learning disability services were not able to treat them. Reiss (1992) identifies that the issue was in the assessment process, distinguishing whether a ‘dual-diagnosed’ person’s primary need was the learning disability or the mental health problem, i.e. which was more significant to their lives or those around them. Concern was centered on the provision of care, such as whether the patient was to be cared for by those in the mental health or the learning disabilities service. Alongside the responsibility afforded to the appropriate service, funding implications were also an issue. A consequence of labelling psychiatric disorders as secondary often meant funding was also secondary and too often inadequate.
It is now generally agreed that people with learning disabilities can and do experience mental health problems and, indeed, prevalence rates are generally regarded as higher than in the general population. Priest and Gibbs (2004) suggest that their intellectual disability and the cause of this disability, such as prenatal brain damage, make people with learning disabilities susceptible to developing mental health problems. There have been findings of higher prevalence of mental health problems throughout learning disabled populations, i.e. within all levels of cognitive ability and age. Birch et al. (1970) found that 40 per cent of people with learning disabilities suffered from mental illness, compared with 10 per cent of the general population. Stromme and Diseth (2000) found that 33 per cent of people with mild learning disabilities and 42 per cent of those with severe learning disabilities suffered from mental illness. Table 1 outlines the reported rates of mental illness in learning disabilities.
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