Silvana Mengoni

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Silvana Mengoni is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Hertfordshire. Her PhD in Psychology was awarded by the University of York in 2012 and explored the development of reading and language in children with Down syndrome. Her subsequent research projects have remained in the area of learning disabilities and have had practical applications to education, health and social care. She is currently working on the WIELD project, which is a randomised controlled feasibility trial using an image-based book as an intervention with people with learning disabilities and epilepsy to improve quality of life and seizure control.

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How “Big Society” is experienced in the lives of people with learning disabilities: Austerity, broken promises and cruel optimism

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Big Society? Disabled people with learning disabilities and civil society is a project funded by the Economic and Social research council (June, 2013 – September, 2015).

The project is a collaboration between universities and organisations of and for people with learning disabilities, further details can be found at: www.bigsocietydis.wordpress.com

Here, just as the project shares its findings at a national conference, Katherine Runswick Cole sets the scene and Silvana Mengoni posts about one of the published papers from the project.

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Increased risk of mortality in people with learning disabilities and epilepsy: Findings from a systematic review

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Epilepsy affects approximately 22% of people with learning disabilities, compared to approximately 1% of the general population.

Here, Silvana Mengoni looks at a systematic review of the literature investigating mortality in people with learning disabilities and epilepsy.

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Trajectory of dementia: is it different for people with Down syndrome?

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Down syndrome is the most common cause of learning disability in the UK and increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s dementia is well documented.

In her debut blog, Silvana Mengoni looks at a paper which uses three case studies to consider some interesting trajectories of dementia which raise some interesting questions.

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