Mental retardation
“I felt that they are mentally retarded people. There is a mental problem with our players. They don't know how to wear their clothes and how to talk in a civilized manner.”
― Intikhab Alam
What is Mental Retardation?
Mental retardation is a cognitive ability which is marked below-average level and a decreased ability to adapt one’s environment. It is a developmental disability. It is also known as intellectual disability. People with this disability learn new skills slower than others and lack skills in everyday life. Some areas which these peoples lack are:
- IQ level
IQ level refers to persons ability to learn, to solve a problem, reason and in decision making.
- Adaptive behavior
Adaptive behavior involves the day to day tasks such as interact with other people, communication with someone else and take care of oneself.
Symptoms of Mental Retardation
There are many children who live with this problem but unfortunately it remains unrecognized for a while especially in the parts of world with minimum awareness. Following are the most common symptoms of mental retardation:
- Learn to rolling, sitting up, crawling and walking late
- Problem in communication
- Late to learn how to dress up or feeding himself by own.
- Memory issues
- Difficulty in solving a problem
- Vision problem
- Hearing problem
- Seizures
- Mood disorders
- Motor skills impairment
Causes of Mental Retardation
There can be a number of reasons that can cause mental retardation. Some of them are environmental while other are genetic. Following are the most commonly observed causes of mental retardation by specialist:
- Genetic problems such as Down’s syndrome
- Problems during pregnancy such as use of alcohol and drugs, malnutrition etc.
- Problems during childbirth
- Some injury or illnesses like measles, whooping cough, head injury etc.
How Doctors Diagnose Mental Retardation?
Although slow functioning of the children gives an idea about their problem but it is still important to seek clinical diagnosis so that the useful interventions and recommendations can be sought. Following are the methodologies and techniques used by the doctors or psychiatrist are:
- Physical examination
- Psychiatric evaluation
- Asking about the symptoms you have experience
- Medical interview
- By lab tests
- EGC (electroencephalogram)
Support and Care
People with mild to moderate mental retardation respond well to administered interventions therefore multiple evidence-based interventions are being utilized in educational and home settings to provide them with support and better life quality. Such children have limited cognitive and social capacities there for excessive efforts on the end of parents and educator’s is required to help them improve their social and thinking capabilities. They lack behind their peers and are unable to generalize the concepts that they learn to other settings. Increasing research and literature emphasize on the use of evidence backed interventions for people with mental retardation of mild and moderate spectrum.
How Doctors Treat Mental Retardation?
Doctors can treat this type of psychological problems by the following methods and techniques which we discussed here:
- Habilitation
- Vocational training
- Normalize of social and recreational activities