Health and Women With Intellectual Disabilities

Rating:
Summary: Health of women with intellectual disabilities
Review: Women's health in general as a special issue is a relatively new concept, but this book is a first with special attention to women with intellectual disability. This is a very timely book, because professionals have long neglected this population and training of physicians and other health professions have been inadequate.
This publication, the first in a new series by Blackwell in cooperation with the International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual Disabilities (IASSID), is edited by Patricia Noonan Walsh. Professor of Disability studies at the National University of Ireland in Dublin and Talmar Heller, professor at the Department of Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The book has 14 chapters by 21 international contributors in three parts: The context of health, health status and trends, and promoting health. The approach is multidisciplinary with authors from medicine, psychology, education, public health, sociology, anthropology and nursing.
This a a comprehensive book with case stories and evidence based results from international research on the health and well-being of women with intellectual disability. The dark side of history is also mentioned with the stories of forced sterilizations and sexual control in the United States in 1900-1950. The chapter on this issue is interesting with a comparision of American and Brazilian attitudes. In this book on women's health the last chapter by Mike Kerr from Cardiff is an interesting addition with the title: Men's health: The female of the species is more healthy than the male. He concludes that the health of the male with intellectual disability is poorer than women, but the reasons not as clear as in the general population.
All in all an important book for the professional working with the population of persons with intellectual disability...