A study across 66 months will take place at ELFT and other NHS trusts to explore if improving quality of life leads to a reduction in behavioural problems amongst those with learning disabilities.
Research has indicated that approximately 18% of people with learning disabilities face issues with their behaviour, including aggression to their peers and those around them. It’s believed that a poor quality of life and mental health problems are leading causes, often resulting in people being excluded from various aspects of day-to-day life.
While many psychological approaches look to understand the root causes of behaviour issues, often these only reduce problems in the short-term and don’t have many long-term impacts on quality of life.
DIALOG+, which is a therapeutic intervention that uses a scale of 11 questions to rate service users’ satisfaction with eight life domains and three treatment aspects on a 7-point scale, is delivered by health professionals at ELFT. While it has been used for people with mental health problems more generally, it has not been used to address learning disabilities.
The Trust will be looking to use the grant to make DIALOG+ accessible and suitable for people with learning disabilities and to use it to help individuals think about things in their life they want to improve.
Throughout the five-and-a-half years, the Trust will:
- Work with service users, carers and clinicians to develop a new version of DIALOG+ (aDIALOG+) for those with learning disabilities.
- Explore whether DIALOG+ can be used in community LD services and care homes.
- Carry out a trial amongst 420 people with learning disabilities in England and Northern Ireland to test if it improves behaviour, quality of life and reduces NHS costs.
- Examine any issues using aDIALOG+, and make suggestions how to address them.
Dr Afia Ali, who is an Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist for Bedford within Services for People with Learning Disabilities, will be leading the project.
Commenting on the grant, Dr Ali said: “I am delighted to be leading the ICONIC project. This is an important and ambitious programme of research that could potentially transform the care received by people with learning disabilities in clinical and social care settings.
“We will work collaboratively with service users, carers and clinicians to co-design an adapted version of DIALOG+, to assess whether it is effective in reducing behaviours that challenge and improve quality of life.”
About Research & Innovation at ELFT
Research at ELFT has influenced public and professional debates on policy and clinical issues in mental health care on local, national and international levels. The Trust has led over £20m in competitively awarded research grants and been shortlisted for the HSJ Award Clinical Research Impact for using DIALOG+ to improve patient outcomes in community mental health services.
ELFT has a history of collaborative work with universities, including partnering with:
- Queen Mary, University of London on the Research Unit for Social and Community Psychiatry, a designated World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre, and the only one specifically for 'mental health services development' in the world.
- Maltepe University in Istanbul, Turkey, to develop a Master’s programme (MA) in Clinical Psychology with Body Psychotherapy Certificate, the first of its kind in Europe and Asia.
- City, University of London, to foster an award-winning lived experience advisory group.
- University of Cambridge, to tackle major areas of unmet health needs – including frailty, long-term medical conditions and narrowing health inequities.