Inclusive healthcare for people with intellectual disabilities: The impact of labelling and biomedical causal beliefs.

[en] [en] BACKGROUND: People with intellectual disabilities often face inequalities in healthcare, including a lack of sensitivity on the part of healthcare professionals who are less able to identify and recognise these people's health needs despite the desire to make healthcare accessible. AIMS: This study examined the links between variables related to intellectual disability literacy and variables related to stigma which may be related to healthcare professionals' sensitivity to the health needs of people with intellectual disabilities. METHOD AND PROCEDURE: An online cross-sectional survey was conducted with 163 healthcare professionals. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the following vignettes, with two presentation conditions (labelled or unlabelled) and two gender conditions (male or female), and the participants were asked to complete an intellectual disability literacy scale (IDLS, Scior & Furnham, 2011). RESULTS: Only 31 % of healthcare professionals in the unlabelled condition recognise a neurodevelopmental disorder. Furthermore, the label predicts an attribution of biomedical causal beliefs and fewer environmental causal beliefs than the unlabelled condition. Moreover, the belief in a biomedical cause predicts a reduction in social distance. Finally, gender and label seem to affect social distance. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Healthcare professionals are not sufficiently aware of intellectual disability (i.e., recognition of symptoms, causes of the disorder). These findings seem all the more important given that our results indicate that attributing a biomedical cause to a person's situation helps reduce social distance, which is an essential element in caring for people. It therefore seems essential to promote practices aimed at improving access to inclusive healthcare.

Disciplines :

Social & behavioral sciences, psychology: Multidisciplinary, general & others

Author, co-author :

Lucassen, Laurie ; Université de Mons - UMONS > Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l'Education > Service d'Orthopédagogie clinique

Rinaldi, Romina ; Université de Mons - UMONS > Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l'Education > Service d'Orthopédagogie clinique

Batsele, Elise ; Université de Mons - UMONS > Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l'Education > Service d'Orthopédagogie clinique

Language :

English

Title :

Inclusive healthcare for people with intellectual disabilities: The impact of labelling and biomedical causal beliefs.

Publication date :

17 March 2025

Journal title :

Research in Developmental Disabilities

ISSN :

0891-4222

eISSN :

1873-3379

Publisher :

Elsevier BV, United States

Volume :

160

Pages :

104969

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Additional URL :

https://api.elsevier.com/content/article/PII:S0891422225000538?httpAccept=text/xml

Research unit :

P319 - Orthopédagogie clinique

Research institute :

R550 - Institut des Sciences et Technologies de la Santé

Funders :

European Social Fund

Available on ORBi UMONS :

since 25 March 2025

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