Mentally Retarded Adults and Rehabilitation Services

Mentally Retarded Adults and Rehabilitation Services

The mental retardation is the developmental disability that is usually present from the birth and can be evidently identified through learning difficulties, cognitive deficiencies, deficit in adaptive behavior, impaired vocational ability and social adjustment problems. It can even be caused due to environmental factors that may include brain injury, trauma, disease, environmental deprivation, malnutrition, demyelinating and degenerative disorder (Ainsworth et al., 2004). Such people have Intelligence Quotient score below 70.

There are numerous rehabilitation centers with aim of promoting and establishing different programs and services for mentally retarded individuals to survive with their disabilities. Craig analyzed and addressed mentally retarded people in his research work in 2006. According to Craig (2006), vocational training and the rehabilitation programs have prepared millions of mentally handicapped people to survive and work in the community and to attain a social status. World Health Organization has defined the rehabilitation as “the application and execution of measures with the objective to reduce the impact of handicapped condition and to encourage disabled people in attaining the social integration” (WHO, 1980). Craig concluded that the ingredients of psychiatric rehabilitation play a decisive role in averting the disability into achievement of social integration with increased self esteem and employment opportunity. The rehabilitation centers minimize the impairment and disability through the pharmacological management and treatment where the antipsychotic drugs are used to treat with the severe mental illness. The cognitive behavioral interventions are applied for enduring the mental illness to help such mentally disturbed people to develop the understanding of their illness. Under this intervention, the patients are encouraged to evaluate their beliefs through maintaining their illness. The therapists play a key role in providing such inventions through effective therapies. The family intervention also has the great impact on the health outcomes of the patients. The rehabilitation centers also aims at educating the families of the handicapped people to learn about the behavior and perceptions of mentally retarded people and to behave well with them so that they can regain their self esteem and can adjust with the social environment. Skills training intervention also provided by such centers in order to correct the daily living skills such as dealing with the finances and managing home. This intervention also aims at providing the skills to get the vocational skills to adjust with the social environment and to live like the normal people. Cognitive remediation is also provided which aims at improving the mental processes of memory, attention and information analyzing speed through numerous exercises or programmes.

The Dr. Silka is a senior psychiatrist and an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Connecticut School of Medicine. She was interviewed in order to get the in depth knowledge about the role of rehabilitation centers and its effective interventions in curing the condition of mentally retarded people. According to her point of view that mental illness is the significantly sub-average functioning of intellect with the IQ below 70. Around 50 percent to 70 percent people ...