The Pros And Cons Of Metal Retardation

The term “retardation” has often been used in society as a word to insult ones intelligence. However, Metal Retardation (MR) is a serious illness thousands of people suffer from each day. Due to historical negative connotations of retardation, the term Intellectual Disability (ID) has been adapted as a means of describing the disorder. MR has been recognized as a neurodevelopmental disorder, which impairs ones intellectual and adaptive functioning capability. Often times an IQ score less than 70 can be used to identity neurological dysfunction. Further test can determine whether a person has syndromic intellectual disabilities such as down syndrome, or a non-syndromic intellectual disability were abnormalities aren’t apparent (Kaufman, Ayub,
Eugenics was the idea that we could control how humans breed in order to increase the reproduction of desirable traits (Grenon, Merrick, 2014). Other scientist such as Richard Louis Dugdale and Henry Goddard, later published worked support this idea. Goddard works focused heavily on immigrants migrating to the United States in which he found them to be “feebleminded”. Supports of eugenics felt that medicine interfered with the process of natural selection (Grenon, Merrick, 2014). They also feared that a growing population of mentally ill people would later contribute to economical problems such increased priced for schools and
In order to properly diagnose people psychological test were invented in the late 1900s. Initially the test were thought to be a more accurate diagnostic tool, however the prevalence of mental disorders started to increase (Radford, 1991). This was due to the fact that the test such as the Vineland Social Maturity Scale and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children identified slightest cases of ID. However scientist strongly believed that early detection of the feebleminded could spare society of any more mentally ill people being produced in the future (Radford,