3DN has released the final report on the scoping project Equipping psychiatrists to meet the mental health needs of people with intellectual and developmental disability. 3DN collaborated with the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) to examine current psychiatry workforce capacity and future training capacity in the area of intellectual and developmental disability (IDD) across Australia and New Zealand. Overall, our findings suggest that there is an established IDD psychiatry workforce across both countries, but closer analysis reveals that a small core group of psychiatrists are providing the majority of clinical care in this area. Without augmenting training in IDD psychiatry, this is unlikely to be sustainable in the long term. There was strong support from psychiatrists for the development of subspecialty training in IDD psychiatry, and evidence that there would be sufficient training capacity to develop this.
We plan to continue working with the RANZCP to enhance the education that psychiatry trainees receive around IDD mental health.
The final report can be downloaded here.