Development of psychotherapeutic training in learning disability

Leila B Cooke,Heena Hargovan

doi:10.1192/pb.29.3.111

Leila B Cooke, Heena Hargovan

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1192/pb.29.3.111

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Abstract

There has been an increasing awareness of the usefulness of psychotherapy as a treatment modality for people with learning disabilities and mental health problems over recent years. However, the difficulties involved in providing appropriate training and supervision in this field has resulted in a patchy and erratic development of service provision nationally (Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2004). A review by Hollins and Sinason (2000) of all the available published evidence found that nationally there was inadequate availability of psychological treatments for people with learning disabilities, that there had been few outcome studies published and most of the literature consisted of single case studies. They recommended that ongoing clinical audit, using standard outcome measures, should be part of learning disability psychotherapy service protocols, and that psychotherapy training and supervision should be made available to health and social care practitioners in the learning disability field.

Highlights

There has been an increasing awareness of the usefulness of psychotherapy as a treatment modality for people with learning disabilities and mental health problems over recent years
The Royal College of Psychiatrists produced training guidelines in 2001 on psychotherapy training for senior house officers (SHOs), and this included mandatory fulfilment of psychotherapy training objectives in order for them to enter for MRCPsych Part II
It stated that other experience should be available in specialist posts. It is mandatory for all SHOs in psychiatry to do 6 months in either child and adolescent psychiatry or learning disability psychiatry, and this has created some difficulties in our experience

Summary

Introduction

There has been an increasing awareness of the usefulness of psychotherapy as a treatment modality for people with learning disabilities and mental health problems over recent years. A review by Hollins and Sinason (2000) of all the available published evidence found that nationally there was inadequate availability of psychological treatments for people with learning disabilities, that there had been few outcome studies published and most of the literature consisted of single case studies. They recommended that ongoing clinical audit, using standard outcome measures, should be part of learning disability psychotherapy service protocols, and that psychotherapy training and supervision should be made available to health and social care practitioners in the learning disability field. Many of them stated that they felt more vulnerable working in learning disability psychiatry, because they found it more difficult to predict aggression in the patients

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