Search

Background: People with intellectual disabilities are more likely to experience sleep problems, which can affect quality of life, physical health, mental health and well‐being. Methods: An integrative literature review was conducted to investigate what is known about behavioural sleep disturbances in people with an intellectual disability. The search used the following databases: Scopus, PsycInfo and Cinahl, to find papers published since 2015. Results: Within intellectual disability research, sleep appears as a common issue due to its high prevalence, negative relationships with an individual's physical and mental health, their quality of life, and impact of sleep problems on family or carers. The growing evidence base appears to support the use of behavioural, lifestyle and pharmacological interventions to improve sleep in people with an intellectual disability. Conclusion: A wide array of literature provides evidence that people with intellectual disabilities are affected by and need support with their sleep. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID‐19 has very publicly had profound impacts on the health system of every country in the world. Over 4.5 million people have lost their lives. School closures worldwide where up to 1.6 billion of the world's children have been out of school, are also prominent in world news. Behind these public impacts are the families. In this paper, we focus on the experiences of families with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) through analysis of two data sets: the emerging research literature and contributions from our author team who have lived experience of intellectual and developmental disability in the context of COVID‐19. From these two data sets, we discern five themes of the impact of the pandemic: on health, on education, on services and supports, on families and finally on relationships beyond the family. We conclude with lessons from those living with intellectual and developmental disabilities, the carers and the individuals themselves to draw implications for supporting families in the context of disability during future pandemics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health status is an important domain of quality of life of people with intellectual disabilities. This paper describes the development of a self-report health status measure for use with people with intellectual disabilities living in staffed community-based accommodation, and reports preliminary reliability data for the schedule.Question and response items were adapted from a well-established measure (SF-36) used in the general population incorporating subscales such as General Health, Physical Functioning, Bodily Pain, Vitality, Mental Health, and Sensory Functioning. A variety of closed and open response formats were used based on the growing literature examining methods for interviewing people with intellectual disabilities.Internal reliability and response consistency were investigated. Reliability for Physical Functioning, General Health and Bodily Pain was reasonable, but was unsatisfactory for Sensory Functioning, and Mental Health.The findings are discussed in light of the challenge of eliciting reliable responses from people with intellectual disabilities. Question methodologies can be built upon in further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]