“We like to imagine … that psychiatry will sometime in the
future give mental deficiency the attention that she is so much
in need of” (1). Since those words 80 years ago, the cognitive
dysfunction originally known as mental deficiency came to be
known as mental retardation (in the 1960s), and most recently
has evolved again into intellectual disability (2, 3).
Throughout this evolution, a small group of physician educators
have struggled to provide psychiatrists with knowledge and
experience in working with individuals with intellectual
disability (ID) (4, 5). Subsequent scholars have confirmed this
relative lack of education in ID (6, 7), made recommendations
for its remedy (8–10), or described programs or curricula in
current use (11, 12). In spite of these efforts, there is
consensus among both psychiatrists in practice and many in
academic settings that the exposure and education of
psychiatrists in the field of ID, and in the dual diagnosis of
ID and psychiatric illness in particular, is inadequate (13)