Making recovery meaningful for people with intellectual disabilities

BACKGROUND

A recovery approach within mental health services has gained momentum. Its meaning for adults with intellectual disabilities recovering from mental health disorders is less understood. Peoples' experiences of recovery were explored to help inform recovery-focused recommendations for clinical practise.

METHOD

A qualitative design using interpretative phenomenological analysis was applied. Nine interviews with people with intellectual disabilities who had experienced mental health disorders were conducted.

RESULTS

Two themes that emerged focusing on entry to service and the recovery experience. Subthemes for entry to service included unfair treatment, valuing information and managing expectations. The recovery experience subthemes were therapeutic alliance, self-management, emotional development, autonomy, connectedness, positive identity and a belief in recovery.

CONCLUSIONS

Hearing peoples' experiences directly allowed the current themes to emerge in the context of living with lifelong disabilities. This article adds to the sparse literature and highlights considerations for recovery-based interventions for people with intellectual disabilities.

A supporting role: Mothers' perceptions of their child's developing awareness of Down syndrome

BACKGROUND

Young people with Down syndrome and their families often contend with social stigma. The present study examined this issue from their mothers' perspective.

METHODS

An interpretative phenomenological approach (IPA) was used to explore mothers' perceptions of their child's developing awareness of their disability and associated social stigma. Interviews were carried out with nine mothers of young people with Down syndrome aged 9-16 years old.

RESULTS

All mothers were sensitive to the stigmatized status of Down syndrome and were at pains to protect their child from becoming aware of it. Some mothers had talked about Down syndrome with their child. Other mothers carefully monitored their child for signs that they were ready to talk about it. On the surface, all mothers believed that their child had a limited insight into Down syndrome and stigma but detailed discussion revealed more complex insights.

CONCLUSION

Mothers expressed uncertainty and anxiety about when and how to talk to their child about Down syndrome.

Self stigma in people with intellectual disabilities and courtesy stigma in family carers: a systematic review

People with intellectual disability are one of the most stigmatised groups in society. Despite this, research in this area has been limited. This paper provides a review of studies examining self stigma in people with intellectual disability, and courtesy and affiliate stigma in family carers. An electronic search of studies published between 1990 and February 2012, using four databases and hand searching of journals was conducted. Thirty-seven papers were included in the review: 17 studies examined self stigma and 20 studies examined courtesy or affiliate stigma. The findings indicate that both individuals and family carers experience stigma and that it may have a negative impact on psychological wellbeing. Awareness of stigma in people with intellectual disability appears to be related to the extent to which individuals accept and internalise the label of intellectual disability. Most of the studies were qualitative studies or small descriptive studies. There is a lack of large prevalence studies and longitudinal studies examining the impact of stigma, in both individuals with intellectual disability and their carers.

The Use of Photo-interviewing: Three Examples from Health Evaluation and Research

This article reviews the use of photographs as data within the social sciences as well as defining related terminology used over the past century. It then examines the use of photos as stimuli for talking about health settings before presenting three recent case studies where photo-interviewing has been used successfully in health evaluation and research. Advantages and limitations of the method are considered.