Causes and rates of death in adults with learning disabilities

We know that adults with learning disabilities die at a younger age and we wanted to know why this happens.

What we did

We wanted to know the following information:

How many people with learning disabilities with and without Down syndrome had died?

What did people die from?

Where did people die?

What we found

We found a higher number of adults with learning disabilities with Down syndrome had died than adults without Down syndrome.

We found that a high number of deaths of people with learning disabilities could have been avoided if they had been given appropriate care.

What we will do next

We will share this information across Scotland to make improvements to the health care of people learning disabilities.

We will recommend that deaths of adults with learning disabilities with and without Down syndrome are recorded separately.

We will recommend that clinical staff an health care workers get more training to support people with learning disabilities.