Article Text

Download PDFPDF
Supportive environment is key to self-determination for people with severe or profound intellectual disabilities
  1. Melissa L Desroches
  1. Community Nursing, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Dartmouth, Massachusetts, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Melissa L Desroches, Community Nursing, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Dartmouth, Massachusetts, USA; MDesroches{at}umassd.edu

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

Commentary on: Kuld PB, Frielink N, Zijlmans M, et al. . Promoting self-determination of persons with severe or profound intellectual disabilities: a systematic review and meta-analysis. J Intellect Disabil Res. 2023 Jul;67(7):589–629. doi: 10.1111/jir.13036. Epub 2023 May 11.

Implications for practice and research

  • Nurses can promote self-determination of people with severe and profound intellectual disabilities through relationship building and learning to read a person’s communication cues to determine their preferences.

  • Future research should use an ecological approach to optimise environments for self-determination and consistent measures to strengthen the evidence base.

Context

Self-determination is a key dimension of quality of life for people with intellectual disabilities, that is, acting freely and willfully to make things happen in one’s own life.1 The United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recognises self-determination as a human right, in contrast to historic paternalisation in which important decisions …

View Full Text

Footnotes

  • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.