This document discusses mental retardation/intellectual disability including its nature, characteristics, causes, manifestations, history, and ethical issues. It defines mental retardation as subaverage intellectual functioning and impaired adaptive skills that manifests during development. Causes include prenatal factors like maternal alcohol/drug use and infections. Manifestations involve delayed skills and difficulty adapting. The history discusses early conceptualizations and the development of treatment programs in the 18th-19th centuries. Ethical issues concern patient autonomy and the cultural construction of mental retardation.

1. Mental Retardation
(MR)/ Intellectual
Disability (ID)
Prepared by:
Abugan, Nancy Lara U.
Bayani Obi C.
Ruiz, Benedict U.

2. Nature and Characteristics
• Mental retardation refers to significantly sub
average general intellectual functioning
resulting in or associated with concurrent
impairments in adaptive behavior and
manifested during the developmental period.
• Characterized by two dimensions: limited
intellectual ability and difficulty in coping
with the social demands of the
environment.

3. Causes
1. Maternal use of alcohol and drugs during
pregnancy.
2. Maternal infections (such as HIV)
3. Poverty can cause mental retardation
through high chances of:
• Lead poisoning
• Inadequate diet
• Inadequate health care

4. Manifestations
• Lack of or slow development of motor
skills, language skills, and self-help
skills, especially when compared to
peers
• Failure to grow intellectually or
continued infant-like berhavior

5. • Lack of curiosity
• Problems keeping up in school
• Failure to adapt (adjust to new
situations)
• Difficulty understanding and following
social rules

6. History
• Egyptian Papyrus of Thebes in
1552 B.C. (Harris 2006)- children
with Intellectual Disability (ID) were born
because the gods had been angered.
• Before the 18th century- societies
differed in how or whether they
conceptualized intellectual disability.

7. • France in 1799. - Jean-Marc Itard, a
medical doctor, developed a skill-based
program for a feral child he named Victor.
• Eduoard Seguin- "physiological and moral
education" and some of its elements, like
individualized instruction and behavior
management, are still practiced.
- in 1866 published an
influential reference book, Idiocy and its
Treatments in Physiological Methods.

8. • Johann Guggenbühl- established the
first known residential facility
for PWID in 1841 in Switzerland.
•
- The facility was
called Abendberg, and during its
tenure it received international
attention, creating a "prototype for
institutional care" (Beirne-Smith et
al. 2006).

9. Ethical Issues
• Allowing patients with mental
retardation to make their own
decisions about treatment, within
the limits of a competency test, is
consistent with the principle of
normalization, which underlies
contemporary approaches to
providing human services to
patients with mental retardation

10. • Mental retardation, understood
as a culturally imposed condition,
is not relevant to the moral status
of a person.