ABSTRACT
As clinicians working in mental health services for people with learning disabilities we are acutely aware of the health and social inequalities that this client group experience. Reviewing past research and historic policy developments, we were frustrated to discover that inequalities among people with learning disabilities had been acknowledged over multiple decades, but little had changed.
There are many ways that a cognitive analytic therapy perspective could inform understandings of the ‘snags’, ‘dilemmas’ and ‘traps’ being enacted and re-enacted within and between organisations.
While the example given will describe a reformulation of premature mortality, a common health inequality experienced by people with learning disabilities, we will invite readers to consider how a CAT lens might benefit their thinking at a systems level in their own contexts. We will outline some of the inequalities people with learning disabilities face in accessing health and social care services and how our reformulation has helped us to rethink our approach as professionals. We will reflect on the benefits that we derived from using a CAT framework at a systems level and talk about our experience of developing a more compassionate approach towards ourselves and others and how our resilience has been strengthened as a result.
