The Use of Validation in Mental Health Nursing for Adults with Intellectual Disabilities and Mental Illness: A Descriptive Study.

Mental health nursing for adults with intellectual disabilities and mental illness is understudied. The aim of this study was to investigate the use of validation in mental health nursing for patients with intellectual disabilities and additional mental illness in a specialised psychiatric inpatient setting. Ten nurses/social educators and four individual therapists described the use of validation; each provided three vignettes with clinical examples. The clinical examples support the view that interventions developed for patients in the general population are feasible also for patients with intellectual disabilities. Clinical implications relate to the use of validation as an important factor in mental health nursing for adults with intellectual disabilities. Skills required include being capable of interpreting behavioural equivalents of mental illness symptoms, responding adequately to unusual utterances, and occasionally communicating in a predominantly non-verbal way.