DDNJ Podcast: MHIDD Special Issue
“I was hoping to achieve inclusive strength-based research so that we would move the field in mental health and IDD,” says Joan Beasley, who received her Ph.D. from the Heller School and Social Policy at Brandeis University. “To be more productive and effective in the strategies that we employ in helping people with mental health needs who have IDD... I remember calling you Matt ,and calling you, Luke, to ask you to be a part of it [because] there really wasn't any funded research. We started to have funded research in intellectual and developmental disabilities. [But] very little in mental health aspects, and certainly none in strength-based approaches to those aspects and very little inclusive research in mental health and IDD.”
Joan and Luke Kalb, an Assistant Professor at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, discuss the motivation behind “Advancing Strength-Based Inclusive Mental Health Research in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.” The article appeared in Volume 4, Issue 1 of the Developmental Disabilities Network Journal.
Joan Beasley states, “...I just want to say the reason why I call it mental health aspects of IDD is because having an intellectual and developmental disability is the same as not having an intellectual and developmental disability. We all have mental health challenges at one point or another in our lives, whether faced with crisis situations, trauma, or innately as part of who we are, and it's true for people with IDD.”
Mathew Wappett, Executive Director at IDRPP, goes on to discuss the rise of positive psychology in society. “I mean, you've got mindfulness and stuff being talked about in popular culture and people talking about strengths-based approaches and it's kind of become hip and cool. And yet we still don't see that positive psychology framework being applied with the population of people with disabilities. So why do you think... there a disconnect there?”
“Because they're not viewed as having character strengths.” Joan responds by discussing her work on START and then states: “The START Model embeds positive psychology in all of our practices. And it has helped us to influence everyone around the person with disabilities to actually feel hopeful and promote the well-being of someone, rather than just trying to control them. And that is a key to doing good crisis prevention and intervention.”
Luke Kalb also weighs in on this question. “So, I would say that trend in developmental disabilities follows the trend for people with disabilities in general. And that is, there's always a lag for everything that gets done for people with disabilities... if we can't measure strengths and people with disabilities, how do we design interventions to promote them in the first place? So, there's just a lag that's taking place... there's still a lag in mental health interventions for people, like I just talked about providers. [Having] trained providers is a massive lag... [So], there's gotta be people at the forefront that are pushing this narrative forward. And that's what I hope... Joan, and I have helped [to] do.”
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