People with intellectual disability experience have twice the rate of mental health conditions that the general population. Mental health is about how you feel. How you feel can change how you think and do things. You can do everyday things when you feel good. When you do not feel good it can stop you from coping. Coping means you can look after yourself even when something is hard.

People with intellectual disability also experience many barriers to receiving mental health care. The result of not being able to accessing mental health support can be very serious and harmful. 

All people throughout their lives need some support to have better mental health. Having better mental health means having more good thoughts and feelings. This supports you to live your life the way you like.

Australian Psychology Accreditation Council works with all the places that educate and train psychology students in Australia. We say APAC for short. Psychology students are people learning how to support others with mental health problems. APAC have reviewed the accreditation standards that say what psychology students need to learn to improve mental health for all Australians.  We say the standards for short. The standards are the rules and guidelines that psychology colleges and universities in Australia have to follow. We think that the standards can help shape better mental health outcomes for people with intellectual disability. 

We have told APAC what we think.

Read our submission here (opens in a new tab). Not in plain English.

In our submission, we recommend 7 changes to the standards to promote better mental health outcomes for people with intellectual disability.

Our recommendations 

1. Write about the Intellectual Disability Health Capability Framework in the standards or guidance notes to encourage good practice. The Intellectual Disability Health Capability Framework is a clear plan that guides accreditation authorities, like APAC, to improve education and training for health students.
    
2. Reasonable adjustments and positive approaches. Develop a new standard to align with the new Professional Competencies for Psychologists which calls for psychologists to make reasonable adjustments and understand trauma-informed and positive approaches to supporting people with developmental disability.
    
3. Exposure to people with intellectual disability. It is key that students receive exposure to people with intellectual disability as part of their training to improve mental health outcomes for this population group. It is recommended that co-design and co-delivery of education with diverse people with intellectual disability is included in the standards.
    
4. Support psychology students who have lived experience of intellectual disability. People with intellectual disabilities have a ‘human right to participate fully in society, including access to education and training.’ This right is protected in international agreements like the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and national legislation such as the Disability Discrimination Act 1992.
    
5. Encourage person-centred and supportive quality care. Person-centred language in the standards could encourage a focus on the person's unique needs and preferences. 
    
6. Reflect strengths-based language. Strength-based language in psychology is important because it prioritises a person’s ideas, skills and abilities to make their own decisions about their healing.
    
7. More specific changes. We provided a table with more specific changes to the standards to ensure that Australian psychologists are providing safe and quality mental health care to people with intellectual disability.

We believe our submission is an important part of strengthening psychology education and training in Australia.

We ask APAC to make these changes we have recommended so that mental health outcomes can be improved for people with intellectual disability.