Impact: Addiction and IDD
The cover of Impact: Addiction and IDD. An image generated by artificial intelligence shows a small group of young people smiling and talking. The image of one person is pixilated, suggesting the loss to our community when someone suffering from addiction can’t find the appropriate treatment or even a competent diagnosis.
The new issue of ICI’s Impact magazine has launched, with articles and podcasts exploring the research and treatment needs of people with intellectual, developmental, or other disabilities who live with addiction.
On the cover, an image created through artificial intelligence suggestions evokes the loss to our community when someone suffering from addiction can’t find the appropriate treatment or even a competent diagnosis.
“This is a huge issue of importance, and the amount of information and the depth of what is covered here is going to be very useful to the disability field,” said Nathan Perry, a person with disabilities who served as an issue editor. Perry and his family, including ICI Director Amy Hewitt, share their very personal stories of living with Perry’s addiction to alcohol. In addition to their articles, they appeared on Impact, The Conversation , the publication’s new podcast series.
Articles share that people with intellectual, developmental, or other disabilities suffer disproportionately from the ravages of addiction. Treatment providers turn them away, claiming they lack expertise in treating people with co-occurring conditions. Most substance use disorder programs don’t offer plain-language materials. Health providers or even family members may miss the early signs of addiction because they don’t think a person with intellectual disability, for example, could be addicted to drugs or something else.
“People who experience disability are often seen two-dimensionally: diagnosis and support needs,” said Lisa Burck, associate director of The Arc of Mississippi, who also served as an issue editor. “This issue of Impact reminds us that in the third dimension that includes love, life, safety, and belonging, there also lies addiction. It is a danger heightened by circumstance, loneliness, and vulnerability.”
Burck said the issue aims to spread awareness that addiction is a clear danger for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), and that preventing it is easier than treating it, but that recovery is possible.
Other articles include information on what the field has learned about addiction and IDD, and about treatment options. Promising programs working to make treatment more accessible to people with IDD are also highlighted.
Authors include well-known researchers in the intersection of addiction and disability, including Sharon Reif of Brandeis University and Elspeth Slayter at Salem State University.
Deeply personal stories, in addition to Perry’s, include Sam D. Gardner, a graduate researcher at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and the School of Social Work; and Isabelle Morris, a former MNLEND fellow and current University of Minnesota student.
“I wonder how many people with autism leave treatment prior to completion because the structure tells us that our behavioral manifestations do not fit the prescribed mold?” Gardner writes in a thoughtful essay about addiction recovery systems.
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