Aging Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities Research Paper 2022

Running head: GERENTOLOGY NURSING
Aging Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities
Author Name(s)
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Author Note

GERENTOLOGY NURSING 1
Abstract
Transition in life involves moving from young age all the way to older age. With this, the
transition affects everyone both people with disabilities and those without disabilities. As the
population of the aged adults dramatically increase, so does the population of aged adults with
intellectual disabilities. Unlike in the past centuries where a few people made it to old age,
improvement in healthcare has helped people to even grow past 80 years old. Thus, the society is
seeing an emerging subgroup of people with intellectual disabilities who are now able to reach
old age. Again, these people are also facing challenges as there are few or no frameworks which
specifically target their needs. This paper would be a discussion of the issue of the transition of
older adults to care facilities and issues faced by older adults with intellectual disabilities.
Keywords: older adults; retirement; Quality of Life; active ageing, healthy ageing,
intellectual disability, health

GERENTOLOGY NURSING 2
Aging Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities
The improvement of health has created positive impacts on the world as both the general
population and the people with disabilities are able to live longer than experienced in the past.
While such an outcome is good in modern society, there is an emerging subgroup of people who
are older adults with limited disabilities. One problem with most of the frameworks is that they
either provide solutions for people with disabilities, or older adults. The purpose of this paper is
to discuss some of the issues faced by this group. The paper will also discuss some of the
interventions and steps that healthcare system can implement to take care of their needs.
Sub Population: Aging Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities
The world is experiencing dramatic changes in policies and practices dealing with adults
with Intellectual Disabilities (ID) over the past few decades (Innes, McCabe, & Watchman,
2012). The important aspect of these changes is that they have led to a shift from where people
with ID lived in segregated residential care into a person-centered approach. With these changes,
even people with ID have longer life expectancy just like the rest of the population. From the
report by WHO, there are more than 1 billion people living with a disability (World Health
Organization, 2011). Reports from international studies have estimated that there are 4.94 people
1000 adults living with ID globally (Maulik, Mascarenhas, Mathers, Dua, & Saxena, 2011). In
Canada, there are estimated to be between 1-3% adults with ID (Sullivan et al., 2011). In overall,
aged adults with ID is a sub-population of aged “healthy” persons most of them having ID in the
late years of their lives.
Literature Review
The increased care and longevity among people with disabilities has led to a sub-
population of people aging with ID (Campbell & Putnam, 2017). For instance, while analyzing