'It's working together with what you've got': Healthcare professionals' experiences of working with people with combined intellectual disability and personality disorder diagnoses.

BACKGROUND: People with intellectual disability often receive diagnoses which may complicate their clinical care. Among these, personality disorder diagnoses are still considered contentious. Little is also known on the perspectives of staff caring for people with intellectual disability who have received a personality disorder diagnosis. METHODS: Three focus groups were carried out to explore 15 healthcare professionals' subjective experiences of working with people with intellectual disability who also have a recorded additional diagnosis of personality disorder. Data were analysed through thematic analysis. FINDINGS: Four overarching themes were identified: (a) diagnostic issues and the need for person-centred approaches; (b) challenges and adjustments to working with combined intellectual disability and PD diagnoses; (c) the importance of multidisciplinary team training, support, and cohesion; (d) provision issues and barriers to service access. CONCLUSIONS: The themes are outlined in depth and a number of implications for clinical management and service improvement are discussed.

COVID: Using the DAN Model with Couples to Increase Family Resilience.

The COVID-19 pandemic has massively impacted our society, affecting both wider systems and smaller ones alike. Families across the world have had to adapt to a new style of living, dominated by uncertainty, which is testing their resilience. Within this context, we have asked ourselves, as systemic therapists, what can be done to provide support and a sense of understanding to families. In this article, it is argued that therapeutic tools taken from a manualised intervention to promote resilience in couples can provide valuable help to families who are struggling in this difficult time. This intervention, developed at the Iscra Institute in Modena, Italy, is called Digital, Analogic, and Narrative (DAN). The tools used in the DAN model are described in this paper and their application in practice is illustrated through a case study.