Mapping the pathway and support offered to children with an intellectual disability referred to specialist mental health services in the UK.

Totsika, Vaso, Yang, Zhixing, Turner, Lauren, Kohn, Charmaine, Hassiotis, Angela, Kennedy, Eilis, Absoud, Michael, McNamara, Rachel ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7280-1611, Randell, Elizabeth ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1606-3175, Levitt, Sophie, Grant, Gemma, Casbard, Angela ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6241-3052, Jacobs, Lauris, Di Santo, Cristina, Buckley, Claire, Hignett, Emma and Liew, Ashley 2024. Mapping the pathway and support offered to children with an intellectual disability referred to specialist mental health services in the UK. BJPsych Bulletin 10.1192/bjb.2024.63

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Abstract

This survey of 66 specialist mental health services aimed to provide an up-to-date description of pathways of care and interventions available to children with an intellectual disability referred for behaviours that challenge or with suspected mental health problems. Overall, 24% of services made contact with a family at referral stage, whereas 29% contacted families at least once during the waiting list phase. Only two in ten services offered any therapeutic input during the referral or waiting list stages. During the active caseload phase, services offered mostly psychoeducation (52-59%), followed by applied behaviour analytic approaches for behaviours that challenge (52%) and cognitive-behavioural therapy (41%). Thirty-six per cent of services had not offered any packaged or named intervention in the past 12 months. With increasing waiting times for specialist mental health support, services need to consider increasing the amount of contact and therapeutic input on offer throughout all stages of a child's journey with the service.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Medicine Centre for Trials Research (CNTRR)
Publisher:	Royal College of Psychiatrists
ISSN:	2056-4694
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	21 October 2024
Date of Acceptance:	16 June 2024
Last Modified:	21 Oct 2024 15:00
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/173225

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