Project: Mental Health and Intellectual Disabilities

People with intellectual disabilities (ID) experience major health inequalities and face multiple barriers and obstacles regarding their health and health care. Like those without ID, people with ID can be mentally ill or mentally healthy. Yet, there is no common understanding or definition of positive mental health in people with ID, which impairs the validity and significance of research on this topic and ultimately limits the quality of mental health care, treatment, assessment, and mental health promotion activities. This contributes heavily to the inequalities regarding mental health in people with ID and is in direct conflict with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities by the United Nations (UN-CRPD).

The primary goal of the present project is to develop and provide the first definition of positive mental health in people with ID using a novel participatory approach.

We are closely collaborating with four co-researchers with intellectual disabilities. The co-researchers support the implementation of our project and are involved in all phases of the research process. The following images and the video provide an insight into the collaborative work with our co-researchers.