Guest editorial
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AMHID-07-2022-073 |
| Published date | 21 October 2022 |
| Date | 21 October 2022 |
| Pages | 121-123 |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care,Learning & intellectual disabilities |
| Author | Nigel Beail |
Guest editorial
Nigel Beail
Psychological therapies
It has been a pleasure to be guest editor of another special issue on psychological therapies. I
had not realised it was nearly a decade since I last did this. Things have moved on a bit since
then. After the last special issue in 2013, I was invited to work with the Royal College of
Psychiatrists (RCP) and British Psychological Society on a revision of the 2004report of the RCP
“Psychotherapy and learning disabilities”. The new report “Psychological therapies and people
who have ID” (Beail, 2016) was published in the form of guidance and demonstr ated that the
range of psychological therapies being offeredhad expanded considerably along with a modest
growth in research. Also, we have developed our knowledge and skills regarding the
adaptations needed. Concurrently, since the publication of the last special issue we have seen
the publication of several books on psychological therapies for example Jahoda et al.’s (2017)
book on cognitive behaviour therapy and Frankish’s (2016) book on disability psychotherapy.
Attachment theory has also developed in our field with the publicat ion of The British
Psychological Society’s (2017) Faculty for Intellectual Disabilitiesattachment guidelines. Trauma
informed care has also become embraced in services for people who have ID and I was
delighted to work with Pat Frankish and Allan Skelly on Trauma and Intellectual Disability (Beail
et al., 2021). In this book a range of trauma informed psychologicaltherapies are also described.
When I agreed to take on the task of a new special issue on psychologicaltherapies, we were
amid the COVID-19 pandemic.This presented significant challenges as some healthservice
provision such as face to face psychological therapy was put on hold. My team and I were
busy trying to work out how to deliver psychological services including psychological
therapies to people who have ID. In mainstream mentalhealth services, there was a sudden
move from face-to-face work to looking at new ways of working so that we could restore
services as soon as possible. Information about remote working began to be available and
new technologies were rapidly introduced to health service delivery. But how would people
with ID access this. In my team we quicklyrated all those waiting for psychological therapy as
red, amber or greenso that we could prioritise those who needed remotecontact and face to
face as soon as restrictionsstarted to lift. We then explored video and telephone options with
our service users. The evidence base for video and telephone therapy was thin but
suggested some promise with the general population; but how would people who have ID
take to this. So, we identified some people on our waiting list who may be able to safely
engage in video or telephone therapy. We them contacted them by telephone to seek their
views. It was overall rather negative and only a small proportion agreed and that was to
telephone based therapy, with most preferring to wait until face to face was available
(Rawlings et al., 2021a). We then carried out an evaluation of telephone therapy with that
small group which was positive (Rawlingset al., 2021b). What was clear was that we need to
return to face to face as soon as possible if we were goingto meet the needs of our service
users. However, telephone delivered psychological therapy is now an option and a small
number of peopleopt for it; an option we had not given before thepandemic.
In addition to psychological therapy being put on hold, assessments for a diagnosis were
also stopped. New waysof working and runningout patient services were developed and put
in place to help us restore serviceswith reduced risk of infection. When we could see people
face to face, we resumed ourassessment work. We also had to move to carryout assessment
Nigel Beail is based at
Adult Specialist Learning
Disabilities Health Service,
South West Yorkshire
Partnership NHS
Foundation Trust, Barnsley,
UK and Department of
Psychology, The University
of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK.
DOI 10.1108/AMHID-07-2022-073 VOL. 16 NO. 3 2022, pp. 121-123, ©Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 2044-1282 jADVANCES IN MENTAL HEALTH AND INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES jPAGE 121
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