Impact Feature Issue on Supporting Wellness for Adults with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

Wellness is a rapidly growing area of focus for people across the U.S. The popularity of health advice segments on TV news and talk shows, of high tech fitness tracking devices and apparel, and of stress management and meditation workshops are a few of the indicators of a growing interest in whole-person well-being. For individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, the benefits of attending to wellness are at least as great as those experienced by the rest of the population. But the opportunities to access wellness activities and resources are not necessarily as available.

This Impact issue presents wellness as touching all areas of life for individuals with disabilities – physical, social, vocational, spiritual, emotional, psychological – with choice-making and inclusion as keys. It offers ways in which disability service providers, health and wellness professionals, community fitness and recreation programs, employers, advocates, individuals with disabilities, and their families can help ensure that opportunities to choose and engage in wellness activities are as available to individuals with disabilities as to anyone else. And it shares examples of those leading the way in supporting attention to life areas that are essential to everyone’s well-being – healthy activity, social connections, pleasure and meaning, supportive relationships, and participation in health care.