Improving quality of life in people with intellectual disability
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Improving quality of life and behaviour that challenges in people with mild to moderate intellectual disability through person-centred solution focused communication (ICONIC)
IRAS ID
349711
Contact name
Afia Ali
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
East London NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 6 months, 23 days
Research summary
About 18% of people with learning disability (also known as intellectual disability or ID) have behavioural problems such as being aggressive towards other people. Reasons include mental health problems and having a poor quality of life such as not having meaningful activities or friends. Behavioural problems can lead to the person being excluded from day services and having to leave their home if family and paid carers cannot cope with the behaviour. They may also be admitted to psychiatric hospital. There are psychological approaches that try to understand the cause of behaviour but only improve behaviour for short periods and do not appear to improve quality of life. One existing approach called DIALOG+, delivered by health professionals and supported by an app, does improve quality of life in people with mental health problems, but it has not been used in people with ID. We want to make DIALOG+ accessible and suitable for people with ID and to test if it improves quality of life and reduces behavioural problems.
We will develop an adapted co-produced version of DIALOG+ (aDIALOG+) and we will do some initial testing with 5 clinicians from community ID teams and 5 care workers who will deliver aDIALOG+ to service users. We will then carry out a feasibility study of aDIALOG+ to see if it can be used by clinicians in community ID services and care workers in care homes. We will see if we can recruit enough clinicians (12), care workers (about 30-50 from 10 care homes) and service users (30 from community teams and about 40 from care homes) to take part, and look at how often aDIALOG+ is delivered. We will interview service users, clinicians and care workers to find out what they liked and did not like about aDIALOG+ and what could be improved.
REC name
South West - Cornwall & Plymouth Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
25/SW/0055
Date of REC Opinion
25 Jun 2025
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion