Mental Health and Intellectual Disability
Working effectively with individual with Intellectual Disability and Mental Health Difficulties – 5 days
Purpose of programme
Provide frontline staff with a framework for understanding and addressing the problems that arise when an individual has both intellectual disabilities and mental health difficulties and possibly a personality disorder. It provides staff with a range of creative strategies which they can use as effective approaches.
Aim of Programme
Programme Outcomes
Social Workers will learn and develop skills in the following areas: :
- Learn how best to provide a safe and supportive service to meet the challenges presented by people with Intellectual Disabilities and Mental Health Difficulties
- Explore Intellectual Disabilities and mental illness, prevalence, indicators, common syndromes, characteristics, vulnerability factors, similarities and differences between MI and IDD.
- Understand and develop support strategies for people with Intellectual Disabilities who have conditions such as Depression, Anxiety, Mood Disorder, Psychosis and Personality Disorder
- Better understand people with Intellectual Disabilities in the context of their history of trauma, and Social Care Workers own emotional and behavioural responses.
- Understand terms such as ‘personality disorder’ ‘mental health’ and ‘behaviour of concern’
- Understand the ‘traumatised carer’ and the difficulties of working competently with people who have complex emotional needs.
- Improves Social Care Workers understanding and confidence in supporting service users with complex emotional needs
Day 1 Overview of Mental Health Problems and Intellectual Disability
- What is mental health?
- What is Intellectual Disability?
- What is Personality Disorder?
- How does intellectual disability affect a person?
- How common are mental illnesses?
- Difficulties of diagnosis
- The relationship between intellectual disability & mental health problems
- Impact of mental health on the individual, families and staff supporting them
- Factors contributing to mental health problems in people with intellectual disability
- Biological
- Social
- Psychological
Day 2 Mental Health Interventions and Intellectual Disability
Understanding and developing Support Strategies for people experiencing
- Depression
- Anxiety Disorders
- Psychosis
Day 3 Dealing with unhealthy pattern of thinking
Examines how a personality disorder is shaped by an individual’s intellectual disability and the difficulties this may lead to.
Day 4 Dealing with unhealthy pattern of functioning and behaving
Examines how a personality disorder is shaped by an individual’s intellectual disability and the difficulties this may lead to.
Day 5 Intervention strategies
Comprehensive intervention strategies for staff when supporting an individual with mental health problems in people with intellectual disability
WRAP – Wellness Recovery Action Planning – 2 Days
Target group – Suitable for those who completed the Working effectively with individual with Intellectual Disability and Mental Health Difficulties – 5 day programme
WRAP is a self-management and recovery system developed by a group of people who had mental health difficulties and who were struggling to incorporate wellness tools and strategies into their lives. WRAP is designed to:
- Decrease and prevent intrusive or troubling feelings and behaviors
- Help the individual gain insight into their relationships
- Increase personal empowerment and support individual to take control of their life
- Improve quality of life
- Assist individual in achieving their own life goals and dreams.
WRAP is a structured system to monitor uncomfortable and distressing symptoms that can help the individual reduce, modify or eliminate those symptoms by using planned responses. This includes plans for how they need and want others to respond when symptoms have made it impossible for them to continue to make decisions, take care of themselves or keep themselves safe.
Continuous Professional Development
CPD is any activity that contributes to a professional’s learning and development. It can be as diverse as completing a course, reflecting on work practices through supervision or researching a new technique or reading a related article. The activity (i.e. action) can be viewed as CPD, as long as it enables the Social Care Worker to apply this learning through reflection or practical application in their professional life.