EVIDENCE BASED PRACTICE

Evidence Based Practice

Difficulties developing evidence-based approaches in learning disabilities

Introduction

It has been estimated that approximately two percent of the population has a learning disability; it is generally categorized as mental retardation in the DSM/ ICD systems of classification. It has been observed that the mental disabilities are occurring two to four times more among people with mental disabilities in comparison with the population in general (Parson J, May J, Menoslascino FJ., 1984, n.d.).

With the increasing number of people suffering with learning disability, there is also an increase in the access to the services related to mental health, because of philosophies related to equity of normalization and access. The practitioner of mental health may resolve the issues of learning disabilities or assist people in dealing with the indirect results for example self harm or poor self concept.

Though it is proven that learning disabilities affects children as well as adults and it can influence the self esteem of the individual in addition to their competency and education. There are chances of presence of co morbidities among the people with learning disabilities. Usually learning disability is apparent by two main components such as diminished social competence and low cognitive ability. These two factors are affected profoundly by the cultural and social influence. As compared to the other ICD medical health disorder, it is difficult to gather the clear criteria of clinical diagnosis for the learning disability. It has also been observed that the norms of the culture adopted by the particular individual also play an important role for the practitioner of mental health in estimating the intelligence quotient and the mental age of the person using the cognitive abilities of a specified level (WHO, 1993, n.d.).

In the past twenty years, service related to learning disability has been shifted from hospital to services provider in the specialist community (Farmer R, Rohde J, Sacks B, 1993, p.p 120-145). The shift causes three major changes:

Care Management was introduced

The social, educational and developmental care packages were created

In the specialist health services there was physical care allocated to the mental health care and physical health care.

The modern era of evidence based medicine and governance of clinical practices, these changes should be reviewed under the evidence of research (Oyebode F, Brown N, Parry E, 1999, p.p 23). There will be a constructive change because of evidence based strategies for the people with learning disabilities, there is not sufficient evidence available for the effective intervention and there might be hindrance of exploring the findings in the general population or among people who have mental difficulties for research purpose. The insufficiency of relevant evidence based practices for psychologists and psychiatrist practicing in the modern period when there is competitive evidence available from rigorous sources for the users to view and gain knowledge and there is also a factor of political correctness. The function of this paper is to find it is difficult to get rigorous evidence research on intervention of learning ...