Scaling methods to measure psychopathology in persons with intellectual disabilities.

The authors read every paper they could find on scales that measure mental-health problems in people with intellectual disability.

They grouped the tools by what they claim to measure: mood, anxiety, psychosis, or general distress.

No new data were collected; the paper is a roadmap of what already exists.

Dozens of rating forms now exist, but many were built for the general public and later tweaked for ID.

Few scales have strong ID norms, so scores can be hard to interpret.

Thurm et al. (2020) later warned that classic IQ and adaptive tests may miss real change in new ID treatments; together the two reviews tell you to pick outcome tools carefully.

van Timmeren et al. (2016) ran statistics on adult ID data and showed that dimensional symptom models predict problems better than classic diagnoses, giving you a reason to favor newer dimensional scales listed in L et al.

Mercier et al. (2025) shifted focus from psychopathology to emotional well-being and found most “well-being” tools are really quality-of-life scales with only one or two mood items—check both reviews so you do not confuse the constructs.

You now have a shopping list of mood and anxiety scales made for clients with ID. Before you write a mental-health goal, flip to this review to see which tool has the best norm group for your client’s age and verbal level. If the scale was adapted from the general population, plan extra training for caregivers so they know how to score ID-specific items.