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Introduction
The emotional well-being of those with intellectual disability (ID) has historically been neglected (Arthur, 2003). Systemic approaches have been suggested for developing stories of ability rather than the dominant story of disability (Baum and Lynggaard, 2016), through the use of social constructionist ideas of using language to create shared meaning (Clough, 2011). These approaches are proposed as more acceptable to service users, carers and staff (Smyly et al., 2008), and narrative therapy, in particular, has been increasingly used in ID services (Kaur et al., 2009).
Narrative theory posits that problems are created within social and cultural environments (White and Epston, 1990), aligning with the social model of disability (Scior and Lynggaard, 2006). Narrative theory argues that difficulties occur when stories developed about people offer limited understandings of the person’s context (White, 1997). These “thin” understandings limit change as they dominate others’ perceptions of the difficulties. Narrative therapy pays particular attention to how language is used to understand and maintain difficulties (Etchison and Kleist, 2000), and aims to create change by developing (“thickening”) alternate understandings (stories) through encouraging externalisation of difficulties – seeing problems as separate from individuals’ identities (White, 1998), and through the identification of exceptions to the dominant story. This leads to alternate, more enabling, stories (Morgan, 2000).
Narrative therapy is arguably of particular relevance for people with ID since their stories are often told for them (Dawes, 2011) and present them as incapable. Such disablist stories which locate problems within the individual rather than society (Reeve, 2014) have been argued to marginalise and stigmatise the ID population (Elderton et al., 2014). Narrative therapy has also been suggested to be more accessible to ID populations compared to other therapeutic approaches due to its focus on the individual’s own words rather than the more academic terms and jargon sometimes used in other therapeutic approaches (Elderton et al., 2014).
Despite the potential benefits of using narrative approaches with ID populations, and its use in services (Kaur et al., 2009), there is a paucity of research in this area. For example, a recent literature review of individual narrative therapy in ID (McParland, 2015) could only cautiously offer evidence for its short-term usefulness, due in part to the small number of studies...