ABSTRACT

Historically in the UK, there has been a large divide in the way mental health services have been provided to those diagnosed with intellectual disabilities and the general population. Intellectual disability (or ‘learning disability’; I use these terms interchangeably) is often used as a primary ‘label’ excluding people from receiving specialist mental health services. Workers in intellectual disability teams in the NHS are expected to meet a vast range of health needs in a population whose disability is lifelong, but who are referred not for having a learning disability per se, but for additional problems they encounter. In fact there is substantial evidence that experiences implicated in the development of emotional distress and subsequent mental health diffi culties within the general population are more common among people with intellectual disabilities (Emerson and Baines 2010). For example, they tend to suffer multiple separations and abandonments, have a higher than usual incidence of sexual abuse and/or neglect and struggle to know what assistance they need. The traditional trajectories leading to mental health input are often overlooked within intellectual disability services and offering talking therapy is fairly recent. CAT, as a transdiagnostic and relational therapy, is a particularly useful approach for people with intellectual disabilities because relational patterns are rarely built on IQ scores (Lloyd and Clayton 2013).