Textbook of Psychiatry for Intellectual Disability and Autism Spectrum Disorder

This textbook provides a state of the art of the knowledge on the prevalence, risk and etiological factors, clinical features, assessment procedures and tools, diagnostic criteria, treatment, and prognosis of the psychiatric disorders encountered in people with intellectual disability (ID) and low-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD). ID and ASD represent two meta-syndromic groups of several different conditions, each with particular cognitive and communication features. People with ID/ASD display an increased prevalence of a variety of psychiatric disorders, including psychotic disorders, mood disorders, anxiety and stress-related disorders, somatoform disorders, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, as well behavioral syndromes, personality disorders, and disorders due to psychoactive substance use. This book will enable readers to understand the specificities of psychiatric disorders in the context of ID/ASD. It explains clearly how diagnostic criteria and assessment procedures for psychiatric disorders that were created for the general population have to be modified for use with ID/ASD. Above all, it will enable clinicians to overcome difficulties in diagnosis and to deliver more effective care that meets the particular needs of patients with ID/ASD. 

“As a clinician and academic I find this textbook remarkable for three reasons. First, is the notable breadth of topic areas covered, which range from fundamental aspects such as assessment, diagnosis and management of core mental health issues, through to less commonly discussed areas of great clinical import such as feeding disorders, sexual dysfunction and organic disorders. Second is the freshness of material, included in contemporary thinking especially in chapters that address educational issue in the field and intersectional issues such as cultural and spiritual issues, and telehealth and its application to the COVID-19 pandemic. Third is the remarkable depth of material, reflective of maturity and sophistication in authorship.” (Julian Trollor, Chair, Intellectual Disability Mental Health & Head, Department of Developmental Disability Neuropsychiatry, Professor and NHMRC Leadership Fellow, UNSW Sydney, Australia)

“This book is indeed a valuable to the current literature on Intellectual Disability and Autism Spectrum Disorder and provides strong links between the different aspects of mental health in this field and an interdisciplinary approach. Mental health needs of people with neurodevelopmental disorders and this textbook have been included in the priorities of the 2020–2023 WPA action plan.” (Professor Afzal Javed, President World Psychiatric Association)

“This Textbook becomes now the most comprehensive tool available to increase awareness, generate or consolidate knowledge, and describe new modalities of treatment and management models in this area. I think it should be widely disseminated and perused worldwide.” (Prof Mario Maj, former President of the WPA, Editor-in-Chief Journal "World Psychiatry")

“Bertelli et al. composed a wonderful textbook on a broad spectrum of mental and behavioural disorders in people with intellectual disabilities and a wide range of issues related to these disorders.” (Dr. Gerda deKuijper, Intellectual Disability Physician / researcher Centre for Intellectual Disabilities and Mental Health /GGZ Drenthe, Assen, the Netherlands, Academic Collaboration for Intellectual Disabilities and Mental Health, University Medical Centre Groningen / department Family Practice / department Psychiatry, Groningen, the Netherlands)

“The Editors are to be congratulated for the consistent way each chapter has been presented, with clear learning objectives highlighted at each introduction, with additional highlighted summary notes throughout the chapters. This will be appreciated especially by students, but other readers as well.” (Prof. Trevor R. Parmenter Emeritus Professor, Medicine, Northern Clinical School, Centre for Disability Studies (CDS), Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney, Australia)

“In more than a thousand pages, worldwide key opinion leaders in the field depict the various themes, starting from the ‘Prevalence and Aetiopathogenesis of Intellectual Developmental Disorders’ up to ‘Teleassistance and Telerehabilitation: COVID-19, Other Epidemic Situations and Future Prospects’. The accomplished result will attract students, support clinicians to overcome the diagnostic challenges and endorse families and stakeholders worldwide.” (Tanja Sappok, past President of the European Association of Mental Health in Intellectual Disability, Department for Mental Health in Developmental Disabilities, Ev. Krankenhaus Königin Elisabeth Herzberg, Berlin, Germany)

Marco O. Bertelli, MD is the scientific director of the Research and Clinical Centre (CREA) of Fondazione San Sebastiano, Misericordia di Firenze, Florence, Italy. He acted and still acts as a consultant psychiatrist to various service providers for people with neurodevelopmental disabilities and mental health problems. He worked as an adjunct professor at the University of Florence, and taught and still teaches in several Italian and international courses. Dr Bertelli is the current president of SIDiN (Italian Society for Neurodevelopmental Disorders) and past president of both the Psychiatry of Intellectual Disability section of the World Psychiatric Association and the European Association for Mental Health in Intellectual Disability. For the World Psychiatric Association, he is currently chairing the Working Group on Autism Spectrum Disorder. He has been a member of the Working Group on Classification of Intellectual Disabilities of the WHO International Advisory Group for the revision of ICD-11. For the World Health Organization is also worked within the Development Group for Autism Spectrum Disorders to the creation of the WHO Package of Interventions for Rehabilitation. He is an editorial board member of some scientific journals in the field, such as the Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, and author of around 200 journal articles and book chapters. Since 2017, Dr Bertelli is member of the scientific committee of the Italian Observatory for Disabilities. In 2011, he was awarded with the Honorary Membership of the World Psychiatric Association for excellence in service, and in 2021, he received the Leon Eisenberg Award of the Harvard Medical School for outstanding leadership and stewardship in the field of neurodevelopmental disorders.

Shoumitro (Shoumi) Deb, MBBS, FRCPsych, MD is Visiting Professor of Neuropsychiatry at the Imperial College London, UK. Prior to that, he was a substantive fulltime Clinical Professor of Neuropsychiatry at the University of  Birmingham, UK, for many years. He led the development of the International (World Psychiatry, 2009,8(3),181–186) and the National Guidelines on the use of medication for problem behaviour among adults with intellectual disabilities and produced the first ever freely available online accessible psychotropic medication leaflets (http://www.ldmedication.bham.ac.uk). He led the development of the first ever European guideline for the assessment and diagnosis of mental disorders among adults with intellectual disabilities which has recently been updated (European Journal of Psychiatry, 2022,36,11–25). He was part of the group that developed the first ever evidence-based practice guidelines in intellectual disabilities in the UK NHS. He developed a screening instrument for dementia in people with intellectual disabilities (DSQIID), which has been translated into more than 24 languages and validated for worldwide use. He developed the first-ever online training programme, SPECTROM (https://spectrom.wixsite.com/project), for support staff to help reduce overmedication of adults with intellectual disabilities. He has around 300 publications (citation index: 7357, h-index: 46, i10 index: 96); done over 250 conference presentations nationally and internationally, including keynote speeches and chairing of sessions; received research grants from the UK NIHR, Wellcome Trust and other charities; led a research/teaching team of over 14 staff; led several masters’ courses in UK universities (neuropsychiatry, epilepsy, psychological medicine etc.); and was the co-chair of SPID WPA, a member of the WHO ICD-11 workgroup on intellectual disabilities and a member of several NICE guideline development groups in the UK.

Kerim Munir, MD, MPH, DSc, DFAACAP is Director of Psychiatry at the University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities in the Division of Developmental Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital, and William A. Hinton Society Fellow in Global Health at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. His research focuses on autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and intellectual developmental disorders (IDD) across the lifespan, with an emphasis on understanding determinants of developmental psychopathology and comorbidity. He served as a member of the WHO International Classification of Diseases, 11th edition (ICD-11) Review Group on Intellectual Disabilities, as well as the WHO Development Group on Rehabilitation 2030. He chairs the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) Section on Psychiatry of IDD, as well as the WPA Presidential Action Plan 2021–2023 Working Group on IDD. Dr Munir has been a vice president of the International Association of Child and Allied Professionals (IACAPAP), and a distinguished fellow and faculty member of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) IDD Institutes. He has directed numerous National Institutes of Health (NIH) federally funded research and research training programmes for over two decades in global child mental health and developmental disorders, as well as in research ethics in the USA, Turkey and Euro-Central Asia region. He is a recipient of the George Tarjan Award by AACAP for contributions in intellectual and developmental disorders, and the Klaus Peter Award of Harvard Medical School in international medical education. Dr Munir chaired the Autism Forum of the World Innovation Summit in Health (WISH) in Doha, Qatar, and serves on the international advisory board of the NeuroGAP research partnership funded by the Broad Institute and the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research of MIT/Harvard spanning Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda, and the advisory group of the Global Mental Health@Harvard interdisciplinary initiative that aspires to elevate the profile of mental health as a fundamental public good and universal human right. He has advised administrations in numerous countries, including Turkey and France, on health, inclusive education, and social care of persons with ASD and IDD.

Angela Hassiotis, FRCPsych, MD, PhD is Professor of Psychiatry of Intellectual Disability at the UCL Division of Camden Intellectual Disabilities Service, London, UK, and an honorary consultant psychiatrist at the same establishment. She is chief investigator of several NIHR-funded studies focused on clinical interventions for a wide range of mental health conditions in people with intellectual disabilities across the lifespan. She supervises MSc and PhD students on projects relating to autism, stigma, dementia and population mental health, and lectures widely nationally and internationally. She is the author of more than 200 publications and has contributed to change in clinical practice via membership of national guideline development groups and the Faculty of Intellectual Disability at the Royal College of Psychiatrists. She is arecipient of the NADD Stephen Reiss Excellence in Research Award, a member of funding panels and study advisory bodies, and the current editor of the Journal of Mental Health Research in Intellectual Disabilities.   

Luis Salvador-Carulla is Professor of Mental Health and the deputy director of the Health Research Institute at the University of Canberra. He is also honorary professor at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Australian National University, and at the Menzies Centre for Health Policy, University of Sydney. He was Professor of Disability and Mental Health at the University of Sydney (2012–2017) and head of the Mental Health Policy Unit at the Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney (2014–2017). His main field of interest is health taxonomies and classifications and the use of decision support tools for the analysis of complex health systems and policy in public health with a special focus on mental health, ageing, disability and intellectual developmental disorders. Prof Salvador-Carulla has intensively participated in the development of international networks in mental health, person centred medicine, healthy ageing, and bridging and knowledge transfer. He has been advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO). He coordinated the European Commission (EC) project eDESDE-LTC for the development of a European classification of services for mental health and for persons with disabilities. He has been principal investigator in over 60 projects in Australia, Europe, the USA, Canada, Mexico and Chile. Prof Salvador-Carulla chaired the WHO working group on the classification of intellectual disabilities at Chapter V of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). He has published over 400 scientific publications. Prof Salvador-Carulla received the Leon Eisenberg Award of the Harvard Medical School in 2012 for his contributions in the field of neurodevelopmental disorders.