Browsing by Subject "älyllinen kehitysvammaisuus (depression"

Intellectual disability (ID) is defined as a difficulty to learn and understand new things. Intellectual disability is divided into mild, moderate and severe disability by the abilities of an individual. Abilities and strengths of an individual vary a lot in the disabled population. Unlike thought before, depression and other psychiatric disorders are even more popular in people with intellectual disability than what they are in the general population. The purpose of this thesis was to examine symptoms and problems with diagnostic methods of depression in people with ID. Due to limitations in mental and cognitive capacity, there is differences in symptoms between general population and people with ID, which also makes diagnosing more difficult. Standard diagnostic criteria and treatments developed for general population can effectively be used to detect and treat depression with mild ID. The same criteria and treatments do not again work on depression associated with moderate to severe ID. Neither have the efforts to build own criteria for people with ID worked so far. According to researches and reviews I examined, almost all of the most potential methods have originally been developed for general people and are based on self-reports. Due to lack of conceptual and language skills, behavioural equivalents like aggression and other challenging behaviour are in a bigger role in diagnosis. Most sources point out the challenging behaviour as a symptom of depression anyway to be very debatable. There is no consensus whether it is a part of depression or ID and at the moment a common opinion seems to be that challenging behaviour should not be used as diagnostic criteria of depression. After all adequate diagnostic criteria or methods for people with severe ID do not seem to yet exist. Improving the criteria and methods would be important for people with ID to get the treatment and quality of life they deserve.