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After reading this article you will learn about the meaning of mental retardation.
The term mental retardation is of recent origin and emerged after medical, biological and psychological sciences accumulated enough knowledge. Earlier such people were referred to as “feeble minded or mentally deficient” implying that their conditions could not be improved and their cause was attributed to sin, heredity and other factors which were irreversible.
It is only more recently after the emergence of scientific methods of measuring intelligence and educational and training strategies, that there emerged a better understanding of the problem. A classic case in this context was that of the Wild Boy of Averyon: A young boy who was found to be incapable of thinking, speaking and many other adaptive functions, was identified and “trained” by famous psychologists like Itard, Seguin and others.
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In fact Seguin designed what is known as the form board used in measuring the IQ of such children. Over the years, however, it came to be established that in many such cases, the problem was one of arrested or retarded development, than a basic incapability.
Hence the label Mental Retardation came into vogue. It is now reasoned that in most such cases, it is possible to bring about considerable improvement in the level of intelligent functions, adaptive behaviour and self-care behaviour of these children. Probably there are very few instances which are irreversible.
It is estimated that mental retardation is nearly 50% higher in males than females probably due to Y-linked genetic conditions. A distinction is sometimes made between primary mental retardation which contributes about 25% of the total population of retarded population, resulting out of genetic factors, chromosomal anomalies or differences in the number of chromosomes and the other group often referred to as secondary mental retardation, where the causal factors basically relate to factors in the environment both prenatal and post-natal including anorexia and toxic infections. Early childhood diseases also contribute to mental retardation.
A number of behavioural strategies like reinforcement, and token economy based on advances in knowledge on the nature of learning have been developed to help and improve the behaviour of those who are not profoundly and severely retarded and therefore do not need total protection and custodial care. Today special training programmes have been developed, to improve their intelligence and adaptive behaviour, their ability to learn in the classroom and more recently even to enable them to study along with normal children in the normal schools.
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This is in contrast to the earlier practices where they were isolated and left to degenerate or even the situation where special schools were established to teach these children. In a movement called “Integrated Education” the emphasis is on integrating these children with the normal children in normal classrooms.
Experiences have shown that this is a distinct possibility and many moderately retarded children almost reach the level of lower low average groups. It has also been shown that many of them can gain from training in simple occupations like tailoring, printing, bakery operations, etc., and can even support themselves economically thus relieving their families and society in general from economic burden.
The importance of this can be appreciated if we understand the fact that many retarded children belong to socio-economically disadvantaged sections of the society and poor families. Such families cannot bear the financial and even the other forms of burden in bringing up the retarded children. In fact malnutrition is another important factor that contributes to mental retardation.
Among other factors, apart from genetic and chromosomal abnormalities, and toxic infections, brain injuries, endocrinial factors like thyroid deficiency, lack of prenatal care, and a few others have been found to be associated with mental retardation. Inadequate supply of oxygen in the foetal stage, or even after birth known as anoxia is also an important associated factor.
From a medical perspective, mentally retarded subjects have been classified into a number of types like cretinism marked by dwarfism and physical underdevelopment, mongolism also known as Down’s Syndrome, where the skull is shaped like that of the Mongol, hydrocephalic indicated by a very disproportionately large skull due to accumulation of excess of cerebrospinal fluid, micro-cephalic, a very disproportionately small skull, etc.
The advances in knowledge in different fields like neurology, biochemistry, psychology and education have helped in developing a number of treatments and therapies and also helping and rehabilitating the mildly and moderately retarded.
In fact many such people today are in different jobs along with normal people though they are a little slower in initial stages. Investigations have shown that such people are able to learn, adapt and adjust themselves to achieve several levels of performance.
What is more important is that many such children have been found to excel in spheres like painting, learning of classical dance and other creative activities. We can therefore appreciate the need for studying the factors involved in the causation of mental retardation more actively and also develop techniques, methods and policies to get the best out of them.