It’s time to start listening: Understanding Intellectual Disability and Mental Health
Concerns are rising that people with an intellectual disability experiencing mental health issues are being overlooked by medical practitioners, police officers and society in general as their needs for support and understanding are misinterpreted.
Some people who have an intellectual disability are also experiencing mental health issues or disorders, meaning they have a dual disability.
Project Open Doors has highlighted this experience in recent story on their website. Click on the following link
https://projectopendoors.org/2017/09/11/its-time-to-start-listening-understanding-intellectual-disability-and-mental-health/
About Project Open Doors
One in five Australians are living with a disability ranging across a broad spectrum of conditions from obvious physical to psychosocial and cognitive disabilities. The issues faced by people living with a disability vary greatly depending on a number of factors including issues of access, poverty, discrimination, criminal activity and lack of support and representation.
We would like to share with you a Journalism and Media Reporting Work Integrated Learning Project Griffith University commenced July 2017. We partnered with Qld Anti-Discrimination Commission, Endeavour Foundation, Queenslanders with Disability Network, Sporting Wheelies and Disabled Association, Deaf Services Queensland, SUFY, and community sector group WWILD to develop and implement this important project.
The goal of this project was to effect change in the way people living with disabilities, their families, carers and support workers are represented in the media, and develop a body of media reporting about issues affecting the disability sector.
We see the potential for this project to provide an engaged voice for people with a disability and the disability community more broadly.
