For adolescents with severe disabilities, efforts to enhance the social dimensions of schooling are widely advocated, yet rarely implemented. The peer interactions and relationships so critical to school success and individual well-being can be elusive for many students with intellectual disability, autism, and multiple disabilities. This article…

We studied the association between multimorbidity, polypharmacy, and mortality in 1,050 older adults (50+) with intellectual disability (ID). Multimorbidity (presence of = 4 chronic health conditions) and polypharmacy (presence = 5 chronic medication prescriptions) were collected at baseline. Multimorbidity included a wide range of disorders,…

In "DSM-5" there has been a move to dimensional personality disorder (PD) diagnosis, incorporating personality theory in the form of the five-factor model (FFM). It proposes an alternative assessment system based on diagnostic indicators and the FFM, while retaining "DSM-IV" categorical criteria. Four individuals with…

Access to age-appropriate literature is often difficult for students with significant disabilities without sufficient support. The picture plus discussion (PPD) intervention is an emerging research-based strategy used to increase comprehension of age-appropriate unadapted texts read aloud. While peer supports have been successfully used to…

School nurses are afforded minimal resources related to assessing pain in students with intellectual disability (ID) and have called for continuing education. The purpose of this study was to measure the effectiveness of an education program regarding best practices for assessing pain in students with ID. Educational sessions were presented to 248…

Background: Supported living is perceived as more flexible than group homes for people with intellectual disability. This study identified costs and factors associated with quality of life (QOL) in supported living and compared this with group homes. Method: Thirty-one residents in supported living participated in a survey incorporating measures…

Background: Current policy in the England suggests that people with intellectual disabilities should, where possible, access mainstream mental health services; this should include access to mainstream therapy services. It is likely that mainstream therapists will need training and support to work with people with intellectual disabilities. Method:…

Background: The intellectual disability field has learned about the lives of people with intellectual disabilities (ID), largely from the perspective of their family and caregivers. Information from caregivers has been critical to scientific advancement, especially when caregivers are engaged on behalf of individuals with significant language…

Background: Parenting can be challenging for people with intellectual disabilities. The nature of the parents' intellectual disability as well as past experiences of institutionalisation, insensitive care and inadequate support can interfere with parents' capacity to provide responsive and appropriate parenting to their own children. This can…

Increased choice and control is a driving force of current disability policy in Australia for people with disability and their families. Yet little is known of how adults with intellectual disability (ID) actually experience choice and control within their family relationships. We used interpretative phenomenological analysis of individual,…

Including the inner perspectives of people who have intellectual disability can pose methodological challenges to qualitative researchers. This article explains how the Listening Guide was applied as an additional step in the analysis during a study which used hermeneutic interviews with people with intellectual disability as the sole method of…

This paper explores the way in which psychologists classified immigrant children as feebleminded through the use of intelligence testing and how state organisations consequently segregated them from public schools based on the scientific evidence. First, I show the way in which the psychologist Lewis Terman utilised intelligence testing to…

Transition planning requires quality vocational and transition assessment tailored to the student's needs, strengths, preferences and interests. Limited research is currently available that addresses assessment types and use of results that rural practitioners utilize to aid in transition planning for students with intellectual disabilities (ID).…

Mobile skill teaching software has been developed for the parents of the children with intellectual disability to be used in teaching daily life skills. The purpose of this research is to investigate the effectiveness of the mobile skill teaching software developed for the use of the parents of the children with intellectual disability. In…

Individuals with fragile X syndrome (FXS), especially those co-diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), face many sensory processing challenges. However, sensory processing measures informed by neurophysiology are lacking. This paper describes the development and psychometric properties of a parent/caregiver report, the Brain-Body Center…