Suicide prevention and supporting adults with learning disabilities

Supporting adults with learning disabilities

There are 1.5. million people with a learning disability in the UK. This figure includes children and adults, and obviously not everyone with a learning disability will draw on social care. Achieve together are one of many social care providers who focus on supporting adults with learning disabilities in supported living, registered care homes, or through outreach support.

For adults with learning disabilities provided with 24 hour support in social care settings, many individuals will have experienced significant trauma at various stages of their lives. Indeed some studies suggest the rate of mental health problems in people with learning disabilities is double that of the general population (Cooper, 2007; Emerson & Hatton, 2007; NICE 2016). Add to that challenges adults with learning disabilities face with making and keeping friends, and often facing limited social networks and opportunities. It is surprising to me therefore that there is little focus on suicide risk for this population.

A need for further research

The most recent LeDeR Report (LeDeR Annual Report, Learning from Lives and Deaths: People with a learning disability and autistic people, 2022) makes a point that suicide “is shown to be a far less frequent cause of death for adults with a learning disability […] reported fewer than 5 times to LeDeR in 2022.” Is this indicating that suicide is not a significant risk for the adult learning disability population, or concealing the reality of the situation?

As a support provider, supporting a significant number of people who pose a risk of self harm and/or suicidal ideation/attempts, the lack of reporting and research in this population is surprising. The learning disabled population often are challenged with health resources and information which are inaccessible or unavailable, and with lack of consideration of reasonable adjustments. This increases the pressure and onus on social care providers to advocate strongly for the person to have access to local health services they are entitled to, creating accessible information and working closely with the person to agree Safety Plans.

Greater focus on this population would be very much welcomed, and Achieve together would like to support with any such focus. If anyone would like to work on partnership with related research or projects, please contact michael.fullerton@achievetogether.co.uk.

Resources specifically for this population seem limited, but excellent resources are available via the Learning Disabilities Toolkit from Grassroots Suicide Prevention.

About the author

Michael is a registered learning disability nurse working within a social care provider organisation, supporting 2300 adults across England and Wales. Michael is passionate about reducing risk of suicide amongst the learning disability population, and ensuring people with learning disabilities have access to appropriate and creative reasonable adjustments with health services, gaining the right health support at the right time and provided with accessible information and safety plans.