Intellectual Disability and Ill Health: A Review of the Evidence

People with intellectual disability often have health needs that go unrecognised and untreated; this may be because of difficulties in communication, diagnostic overshadowing, discrimination or indifference. There is concern that public health measures aimed at reducing the main health killers in the population will not address these issues for people with intellectual disability and may preferentially widen the inequality that already exists. This book is a comprehensive and systematic review of physical and mental health co-morbidities in people with intellectual disability. Such an evidence base is vital in shaping public health policy, healthcare commissioning and the development of more effective healthcare systems, as well as supporting better understanding and practice at an individual clinical level. This is essential reading for policy makers and commissioners of services, as well as individual practitioners across mainstream and specialist health and social care, in considering not only service developments but practice at the coalface.

Jean O'Hara FRCPsych is Consultant Psychiatrist and clinical Director, south London and the Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and Visiting Research Associate, Estia Centre, King's College London, Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK. Jane Mccarthy MD, MRCGP, FRCPsych is Consultant psychiatrist and Visiting Research Associate, Estia Centre, King's College London, Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK. Nick Bouras MD, Ph.D., FRCPsych is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at South London and the Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, and Director of Maudsley International, London, UK.