Generic services for people with a mental handicap

Abstract

There has been much discussion on the most suitable services for mentally handicapped people with special needs such as additional mental illness or marked behavioural disorders. A number of policy documents have advocated the use of generic services as a matter of course, such as the All Wales Strategy (1983), while others have acknowledged a possible need for specialist input when such services are used e.g. Needs and Responses (Department of Health, 1989). In 1986 the Royal College of Psychiatrists stated that the psychiatric needs of this group required a specialised service and suggested that ideally this would be integrated with other psychiatric specialities as part of a comprehensive service.

General psychiatric services for adults with intellectual disability and mental illness

“…In the United Kingdom four controlled studies have investigated the clinical characteristics of people with ID in different inpatient settings using different control groups. Nolan & Radakrishnan (1992) compared people with ID admitted to four specially designated beds in a general psychiatric ward of a university hospital with those admitted to the local mental handicap hospital. Ashaye et al.…”

Psychiatric inpatient care for adults with intellectual disabilities: generic or specialist units?

“…Earlier studies described a model of providing an inpatient service for adults with ID within a generic psychiatric ward with (Nolan et al. 1992) or without (Pary 1993) a number of specifically designated beds.…”

“…There is an emphasis on community care but inpatient care remains a necessity for some patients who cannot be assessed or treated in the community. Utilization of general adult mental health units (Nolan et al. 1992) or specialist ID units (Trower et al.…”

A comparison of different models to meet the mental health needs of adults with intellectual disabilities

“…Again there has been debate concerning how such in-patient stays should be provided, specifically whether patients should be admitted to generic wards or specialist in-patient units, with proponents of both models (Nolan et al, 1992;Hemmings et al, 2009). Generic vs specialist wards.…”