Symposium on the emotional development approach

Dear colleagues working in the field of ID:

We are glad to invite you to I Symposium on the emotional development aproach: a new perpective to understand challenging behaviour in people with intellectual disabilities, which will take place on October 20th and 21st, at Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu (Sant Boi, Barcelona), in hybrid format, from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

The meeting has been organized by the Network of Europeans on Emotional Development (NEED), a group of professionals from the European Society for Mental Health and Intellectual Disability (EAMHID), together with the Xarxa de Salut Mental from Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu.

Some of the most frequent disorders in people with intellectual disability are behavioural disorders, which are observed in 30-60% of cases. Mediterranean countries currently work with a positive behavioural support model, a British trend, mainly introduced in organisations working with people with intellectual disability and behavioural problems, which helps prevent and respond to these behaviours.

It was 20 years ago when the Germanic countries first adopted an approach involving an emotional development model. This model is based on the potential consequences of asynchrony between emotional and cognitive development. Such a situation can give rise to behavioural problems and associated psychiatric disorders in people with intellectual disability. In other words, it is a psychotherapeutic model based on the fact that cognitive development is not only intellectual but also emotional.

Understanding emotional development in people with intellectual disability provides a more accurate diagnosis, assessment and treatment for the person, as it helps detect factors that play a role in the development of psychiatric disorders or behavioural problems and, secondarily, it permits therapeutic strategies to be established to improve mental health problems.

As for the last decade, the model has been given a more scientific character thanks to a neuropsychiatric perspective, i.e., relating emotions to neuronal structures.

In this context, the NEED group, together with SJD Xarxa de Salut Mental del Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu, are holding their first ever conference in Spain on this new approach.

The aim of the symposium is for European professionals to present this new way of tackling behavioural problems, at a statewide level, as a complement to the positive behavioural support model.

The meeting on 20 October will provide a scientific introduction from the neuropsychiatric perspective, which can later be complemented by 6 practical workshops on Friday 21 October.

In short, it will be a meeting to highlight the emotional development model and advance understanding and treatment of people with intellectual disability, thereby improving the approach to behavioural problems and the search for the causal factors in associated psychiatric disorders.

You can view the full digital programme here.

It is essential to register for both the on-site and online options to access the symposium on the 20th.

As for the workshops, you can register using the same process for a maximum of 3 workshops on the 21st, which will be held as an on-site option only.

The conference and workshops will be entirely in English, with simultaneous translation into Spanish on the 20th for both on-site and online options. A consecutive translation service will be available for the workshops on the 21st, also in English.

Please, find complete information on the Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu website.