The development of a new integrated mental health service for people with learning disabilities

Accessible summary • People with learning disabilities can have mental health problems like anyone else. • People with learning disabilities should be able to use the same mental health services as anyone else. • In this article we say how we have tried to make this happen. Summary It is now well recognized that people with learning disabilities experience the full range of psychiatric disorders. Public policy in the United Kingdom advocates that people with learning disabilities should access mainstream mental health services. Here we discuss the challenges this policy presents, and then describe the somewhat tortuous and unpredictable processes we went through to set up a service that properly enabled such access. We describe the service model in some detail, then reflect on overcoming barriers to implementation, and how we maintain the service model. Finally we draw some lessons for future service development initiatives.