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The purpose of this paper is to determine the relation between quality of life (QoL), mental illness, challenging behaviour and institutionalisation in an adult population with intellectual disabilities (ID).

The study assessed the QoL and its conditioning factors in 142 subjects with different degrees of ID. The GENCAT and Quality of Life in Late Stage Dementia scale were used to evaluate QoL, the Psychiatric Assessment Schedule for Adults with Developmental Disability and Diagnostic Assessment for the Severely Handicapped-II scale to assess mental illness and the Inventory for Client and aetiology Planning scale to assess challenging behaviour.

Individuals who live in residential care homes were found to have significantly impaired QoL (<0.001). Individuals with challenging behaviour presented significantly lower QoL, regardless of ID aethiology and degree, while psychiatric disorders did not seem to have a direct influence on individual QoL.

This paper provides new insight into the importance of challenging behaviour and psychiatric disorders in the QoL of individuals with ID.

Studies on psychiatric comorbidity in individuals with borderline intellectual functioning (BIF) are scarce, particularly with respect to certain diseases frequently observed in clinical practice. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the relevance of epidemiological research to psychiatric comorbidity in people with BIF.

Systematic searches of MEDLINE, EMBASE and Cochrane databases. Inclusion criteria: publications about BIF appearing between 1995 and 2017; epidemiological findings about comorbid mental disorders in individuals with BIF; and studies comparing BIF, mild intellectual disability (ID) and normal intellectual functioning. The discussion covers 24 of the 224 studies initially considered.

The most frequent psychiatric comorbidity reported was personality, post-traumatic as well as psychotic disorders, followed by psychosis, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, bipolar and sleep disorders. Individuals with BIF exhibit psychiatric comorbidity more frequently than individuals with normal intellectual functioning. Some psychiatric comorbidities were similarly prevalent in patients with BIF and those with mild or moderate ID; however, the prevalence was always higher in people with severe ID. Environmental factors, especially psychosocial adversity, seem to play an important mediating role. Pharmacotherapy is the most common treatment approach, including behavioural disorders.

This review of literature on mental disorders in people with BIF demonstrates the epidemiological relevance of psychiatric comorbidity, especially personality and post-traumatic disorders. Mental health professionals, general practitioners and other workers in outpatient settings have to be aware about the vulnerability and even fragility of people with BIF.

This paper aims to explore how the cross-fertilization of knowledge and technologies in EU-funded research projects, including serious games and gamification, is influenced by the following variables: multidisciplinarity, knowledge base and organizations (number and diversity). The interrelation of actors and projects form a network of innovation. The largest contribution to cross-fertilization comes from the multidisciplinary nature of projects and the previous knowledge and technology of actors. The analysis draws on the understanding of how consortia perform as an innovation network, what their outcomes are and what capabilities are needed to reap value.

All the research projects including serious games and/or gamification, funded by the EU-Horizon 2020 work programme, have been analyzed to test the hypotheses in this paper. The study sample covers the period between 2014 and 2016 (June), selecting the 87 research projects that comprised 519 organizations as coordinators and participants, and 597 observations – because more organizations participate in more than one project. The data were complemented by documentary and external database analysis.

To create cross-fertilization of knowledge and technologies, the following emphasis should be placed on projects: partners concern various disciplines; partners have an extensive knowledge base for generating novel combinations and added-value technologies; there is a diverse typology of partners with unique knowledge and skills; and there is a limited number of organizations not too closely connected to provide cross-fertilization.

First, the database sample covers a period of 30 months. The authors’ attention was focused on this period because H2020 prioritized for the first time the serious games and gamification with two specific calls (ICT-21–14 and ICT-24–16) and, second, for the explosion of projects including these technologies in the past years (Adkins, 2017). These facts can be understood as a way to push the research to higher technology readiness levels (TRLs) and introducing the end-user in the co-creation and co-development along the value chain. Second, an additional limitation makes reference to the European focus of the projects, missing strong regional initiatives not identified and studied.

This paper has attempted to explore and define theoretically and empirically the characteristics found in the cross-fertilization of collaborative research projects, emphasizing which variables, and how, need to be stimulated to benefit more multidisciplinary consortia and accelerate the process of innovation.