Challenging behaviours often results in exclusion from communities and is associated with worse outcomes for patients with Intellectual Disability (ID). Due to substantial cut backs in local community service provisions across Highland for people with ID, placements have dwindled and recent trends indicate a high demand for “crisis” inpatient admission for PWID with co-morbid mental health and/or pervasive developmental disorders. This project aims to thematically analyse the admission trends to the Intellectual Disability Assessment and Treatment Unit (IDATU) in NHS Highland over a 5 year period (2018-2022).

All patients admitted to and discharged from the IDATU over a 5 year (2018-2022) period were identified. Their case notes were reviewed and details on the primary reason for admission were manually gleaned from the admission clerking document. Data were also gathered for demographics, diagnosed mental disorder, legal status and length of admission.

Total 18 new admissions were identified. All had established ID and/or co-morbid mental illness, autism, & other organic conditions. The average age was 30.2 years. 81% of admissions were formal. Length of admission varied from 1 to 814 days.

Allowing for some overlap, admission themes mainly fell into 3 categories: challenging behaviour related- Aggression, Abscond, Self-Neglect, Suicidal (50%), Decline in mental/Physical health- Psychosis, Confusion, Weight Loss (16.7%) and manageability- Vulnerability, Breakdown of social situations (33.3%).

Several themes were identified amongst the stated reasons for admission in case notes. A pattern emerged whereby these fell into 3 different headings as shown by the table here.

The above three themes identified are not surprising. A combination of behaviours grouped as “challenging” and also felt to be “unmanageable” were cited as primary reasons for admission.

Notwithstanding the dwindling of community resources and workforce attrition within the ID Service in recent years, the actual numbers admitted to IDATU was roughly down by 50% comparing a 5 year analysis done from 2012-2017 (34 Vs 18).

Robust scrutiny/tightening of IDATU admission criteria, along with other new service initiatives may have helped mitigate against any inappropriate use of IDATU beds.

Given the established and well researched risk of institutionalisation, it is of interest to us that our findings suggest that the services employed by the State to reduce this risk were already involved in a large proportion of cases. It is our recommendation that future service development planning should focus, incentive, invest and expand robust community ID services and resources within Highland.