The concept of Quality of Life (QoL) has gradually acquired importance and interest. in its application and development it was able to represent an important and valuable conclusion for many a clinical trials. However, until now little research has been conducted toward evaluating QoL results in Intellectual Developmental Disorders (IDD).

Pharmacotherapy in IDD is mainly directed towards managing behavioral symptoms and psychiatric disorders, with limited relevance to QoL.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical review of the literature on the QoL as a new outcome measure on pharmacological research in IDD.

A review of the literature from the last 15 years was carried out and an article search was conducted using search engines available on Medline, EBSCO, Web of Science, Medmatrix, NHS Evidence and Cochrane Library. the main keywords that were used in the searches included the following: intellectual developmental disorders, autism, autism spectrum disorders, pervasive developmental disorders, mental retardation, intellectual disability, learning disability, developmental disorder, developmental disability, quality of life, psychopharmacology and psychopharmacotherapy. Afterwards the authors went through all of the articles to produce organisational criteria and comments.

A QoL measure on IDD certainly has clinical utility. Given that individuals with IDD are a highly vulnerable population and that the medications used to treat them could have serious side effects and important repercussions on daily practice, it seems imperative that their use be directed by empirically supported research that considers new person-centered outcome measures such as QoL.