THEORITICAL BACKGROUND

According to the definition by the American Association of Intellectual and Development Disabilities (AAIDD), an individual is considered to have an intellectual disability (mental retardation) based on the following three criteria: 1. Intellectual functioning level (IQ) is below 70-75; 2. Significant limitations exist in two or more adaptive skill areas; and 3. The condition manifests itself before the age of 18. Adaptive skill areas are those daily living skills needed to live , work and play in the community. The definition includes 10 adaptive skills: Communication, self-care, home living, social skills, leisure, health and safety, self-direction, functional academics, community use and work.Adaptive skills are assessed in the persons typical environment across all aspects of an individual life. A person with limits in intellectual functioning who does not have limits in adaptive skill areas may not be diagnosed as having an intellectual disability. Children with an intellectual disability grow into adults with an intellectual disability; they do not remain eternal children.

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In 1690, the English philosopher Jhon Locke published his influential work, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, in which he posed a theory that the mind as a blank slate; thoughts, beliefs, and personality were not innate but rather things that were learned by way of the senses and experience. This new understanding was a breakthrough in that it set the stage to view people as creatures capable of learning who could benefit from corrective experience and therapies. IN many ways, the introduction of the philosophical viewpoint into European society set the stage for the modern conception of psychotherapy and rehabilitation. Locke was one of the first thinkers to differentiate between intellectual disability and other forms of madness. In Lockes view, Herein seems to lie the difference between idiots and madmen, that madmen put wrong ideas together and reason from them, but idiots make very few or no propositions and reason scarce at all. By the end of the Middle Ages, the idiots and the insane were confined to poorly run asylums. These large facilities were warehouses that lumped together people with intellectual disabilities along with the mentally ill, and offered no useful treatment or education. They served instead to segregate the deformed from normal society. These hospitals were sites of neglect and abuse and the quality of life among institutionalized people would be considered rather obscene by todays standards. It was common practice to detain people with intellectual disabilities indefinitely within these neglectful hospitals; however, some have argued that as bad as these institutions were, being detained was a better fate than being left to fend for ones self or being imprisoned. Major reforms occurred as the medical causes of intellectual disability and mental illness became better understood, and as a culture of psychotherapy and medical advances became the norm of the twentieth century. Before such reforms could occur, however, the cultural understanding of intellectual disability had to shift. The first major shift that occurred was that society came to understand intellectual disability as a result of medical problems and not of divine justice.

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Howes On the Causes of Idiocy, written in 1846, reflected common misconceptions of intellectual disabilities of the time. Howe suggested that intellectual disability ( as well as mental illness) were caused by an individuals actions. The affected person may have broken the laws of nature; or, one or both of his parents must have done so. The sources of intellectual disability were believed to be an unhealthy lifestyle, marriages between blood relatives, heredity, gluttony, and excessive or deviant sexual activity. Such negative attitudes toward individuals with intellectual disabilities have persisted over the centuries and are still readily detected within contemporary society. Though Howes causal theory of intellectual disability was not taken seriously for very long, he made a lasting condition to the way that intellectual disabilities are described by offering one of the first classification schemes that distinguished between the more profoundly impaired individuals from the less impaired folk. Howe was one of the first writers to classify individuals with intellectual disabilities according to the severity of their impairments. For example, Howe referred to the profoundly impaired person as heaps of skin and bone in the shape of a human.

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According to the AAIDD (American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities) that Intellectual disability is characterized by significant limitations both in intellectual functioning and in adaptive behavior, which covers many everyday social and practical skills. This disability originates before the age of 18. One criterion to measure intellectual functioning is an IQ test. Generally, an IQ test score of around 70 or as high as 75 indicates a limitation in intellectual functioning. Standardized test can also determine limitations in adaptive behavior, which comprises three skill types: Conceptual skills language and literacy; money, time, and number concepts; and selfdirection. Social skills interpersonal skills, social responsibility, self-esteem, to follow rules/obey laws and to avoid being victimized. Practical skills activities of daily living (personal care), occupational skills, healthcare, travel/transportation, schedules/routines, safety , use of money, use of the telephone.

On the basis of such many-sided evaluations, professionals can determine whether an individual has an intellectual disability and can tailor a support plan for each individual. But in defining and assessing intellectual disability, the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD) stresses that professionals must take additional factors into account, such as the community environment typical of the individuals peers and culture. Professionals should also consider linguistic diversity and cultural differences in the way people communicate, move, and behave. Comments/Reaction:

Doll (1941) set out six essential criteria of intellectual disability, or as he called it, mental deficiency: -social incompetence -due to mental subnormality -which has been developmentally arrested -which obtains at maturity -is of constitutional origin -is essentially incurable. This definition clearly reflected a medical model of intellectual disability, with its emphasis on biologically based causation and incurability, while acknowledging its expression in social incompetence. There are also implications for policy and service provision which can be drawn from this conception. If intellectual disability is always of constitutional origin, then the whole focus of research efforts is likely to be on prevention at the level of biomedical research. There was little understanding at this time of environmental effects on intellectual and social functioning, such as poverty and lack of education. At a societal level, prevention at the level of reproduction would also be a logical implication from such conception people with an intellectual disability should not be allowed to have children. Eugenic beliefs resulted in widespread sterilization, incarceration and segregation of people with an intellectual disability, in many Western countries, during the 1940s and up until the early 19170s. Furthermore, if intellectual disability is essentially incurable, families and society should not waste their efforts and resources on training and education, which could only be expected to bring about minimal improvements in functioning. And, last but not least for the people so labeled once a diagnosis had been made, then the die was cast - it was virtually impossible to escape from the label and all the assumptions of incompetence that accompanied it. Someone must have simply made a wrong diagnosis in the first place. Comments/Reaction: