Ill-health and intellectual disabilities

Adults with intellectual disabilities are recognized globally as a group of individuals with poorer access to appropriate healthcare and have worse health outcomes than the general population, including significantly reduced life expectancy. This article reviews the evidence base published over the past 12-24 months, highlighting how public health policy is influencing the literature on the health needs of people with intellectual disabilities.

Recent studies looking at information from death certificates found people with intellectual disabilities died 15 years younger than people without intellectual disabilities. Using standardized mortality rates, the overall mortality for people with intellectual disabilities is three times higher than for the general population. People with intellectual disabilities have higher rates of asthma and oral disease, but similar rates of hypertension. There is limited high-quality evidence on drugs used to treat epilepsy in this population, despite epilepsy being one of the leading causes of premature deaths.

Recent evidence continues to show that people with intellectual disabilities have poorer health outcomes than the general population. However, the quality of evidence available on the wider health needs remains limited, but, with the move to a public health approach through health surveillance, this may increase the quality of evidence available, so influencing health outcomes for people with intellectual disabilities.