Exploring voice hearing in adults with learning disabilities
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Exploring the lived voice hearing experiences of adults with learning disabilities and examining what impact sharing voice stories has on forensic nursing staff.
IRAS ID
113838
Contact name
Anne Marie Todd
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Huddersfield University
Research summary
Adults with learning disabilities have traditionally been excluded from psychosis research studies and intervention trials because of their learning disabilities. There a distinct lack of knowledge about adults with learning disabilities and their lived experience of psychosis including specific symptoms such as voice hearing. Interventions for voice hearing have been developed based on working with people without underlying learning disabilities. These interventions are not based on a thorough understanding of what these experiences mean for this population. Because of the lack of attention to adults with learning disabilities in the research there is a gap to explore the lived experiences and subjective meanings of this phenomenon for this population and this research aims to address this gap. This study aims to give people with learning disabilities an opportunity to talk about their experiences and tell their stories. The stories aim to inform academic understanding about the voice hearing experiences in this population. Sharing the stories with nursing staff hopes to raise awareness and develop staff understanding which may enhance care delivery. This research project intends to be a study with two distinct halves. The first part aims to interview and audio record individual adults with mild or borderline learning disabilities who hear voices and find out about their experiences of voice hearing. These stories will then be transcribed to provide written accounts of voice hearing experiences. The second part involves individual audio recorded interviews with a sample of forensic nursing staff and aims to find out about their thoughts about the voice hearing experiences of people in their care. A sample of these voice stories will be shared with the nursing staff and using a qualitative approach there will be an exploration of how these stories impact on staff understanding of the voice hearing experiences of adults with learning disabilities.
REC name
North East - York Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
13/NE/0317
Date of REC Opinion
5 Dec 2013
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion