Problem Based Learning in Mental Retardation

Many students and trainees starting their work with peoplehaving mental retardation find it difficult to understand thesimilarities and uniqueness with which they present and theneed for good management. There are a variety of serviceinputs and models to meet some of the mental health needs ofchildren, young people and adults with learning disabilities. Theservices for such children are provided by specific LearningDisability psychiatric teams or by challenging behaviourteams. Generic child health and the voluntary sectors providesome elements of the service. However, the above mentionedservices do not have a specific remit to look after all the physicaland mental health needs of children and young people withlearning disabilities and that has created a lack of coherencein service provision. Professionals working with these children,need a basic understanding of the needs, assessment methodsand management techniques and this book tries to addressthose issues.There is some confusion with the terminology used for this clientgroup. The Department of Health adopted learning disabilityas the term to identify the condition of mental retardation, theterm used in the International Classification of Diseases 10thedition ICD-10. The Department of Education uses the termlearning difficulty (Education Act 1993) and the Americanliterature uses learning disability to refer to the ICD-10 termspecific developmental disorders. In this book, in order toincrease consistency we will use the ICD-10 terminology.The book is aimed to be a basic introductory book focussing onessential theory and practice of managing learning disabilityand mental health issues related to learning disability. The MCQ'sand problem solving way of presentation is designed to avoidrepetition and to help in focussed learning for examinations.