Equipping Future Psychiatrists to Meet the Mental Health Needs of People with Intellectual and Developmental Disability | Department of Developmental Disability Neuropsychiatry (3DN)

Past project

Psychiatrists have a key role within the mental health workforce to deliver quality mental health care to people with intellectual and developmental disability and co-occurring mental ill health. However, Australian psychiatrists both at a trainee and consultant level have reported that they have received insufficient education in this area, and lack confidence to provide quality care for this group. To address these concerns there have been consistent calls for advanced, subspecialty training in intellectual and developmental disability for psychiatrists. The first steps in this process are to determine the current workforce capacity of psychiatrists in this field, and potential to train future psychiatrists in the area.

Our specific aims were to:

Map the current workforce capacity in the area of intellectual and developmental disability mental health.
Map the potential for training new psychiatrists with a subspecialty in intellectual and developmental disability mental health.
Develop, in collaboration with the Section of Psychiatry of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (SPIDD) of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP), a proposed curriculum for intellectual and developmental disability mental health subspecialty training in psychiatry.

Publications from this project

Cvejic RC; Eagleson C; Weise J; Davies K; Hopwood M; Jenkins K; Trollor JN, 2018, 'Building workforce capacity in Australia and New Zealand: a profile of psychiatrists with an interest in intellectual and developmental disability mental health', Australasian Psychiatry, vol. 26, pp. 595 - 599, doi: 10.1177/1039856218781018
Davies K; Eagleson C; Weise J; Cvejic RC; Trollor JN, 2019, 'Clinical capacity of Australian and New Zealand psychiatrists who work with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities', Australasian Psychiatry, doi: 10.1177/1039856219859286
Eagleson C; Cvejic RC; Weise J; Davies K; Trollor JN, 2019, 'Subspecialty training pathways in intellectual and developmental disability psychiatry in Australia and New Zealand: current status and future opportunities', Australasian Psychiatry, doi: 10.1177/1039856219839468