End of life and people with intellectual disability

It has only been four years since the Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities (JARID) last published a special issue on Death and Dying, edited by Stuart Todd, Jane Bernal and Rachel Forrester-Jones. Todd, Bernal, and Forrester-Jones (2013) noted that end-of-life research is relatively new in our field, but with “a small but growing international interest” (p. 183). That characterization is partly challenged by the size (15 papers and one consensus statement) of the current special issue—end of life seems no longer such a small area in intellectual disability research. Todd et al’s. (2013) recognition of international interest is evident from the geographic spread of papers in the current issue, from five countries —Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, UK and the USA—ably illustrating that dying and death know no international boundaries, are ageless, timeless and span all cultures and faiths. Even so, as an emerging field, there are inevitable gaps in the research base. This special issue addresses some of those gaps, in that to our knowledge, several papers represent the first research on important but previously unexamined topics and/or participant groups. Our Editorial is intended to place the special issue papers within a larger context. We aim to recognize areas of consolidation and progress in research on end of life but also to identify a number of important topics and/or participant groups that remain under-researched or unexamined