Egyptian Papyrus of Thebes in 1512 BC

Intellectual disability is one of the most common disabilities Early history: - Earliest reference dates to Egyptian Papyrus of Thebes in 1512 BC Ancient Greeks and Romans thought that children with ID were born because the gods were angry - Children with severe ID would be allowed to die of exposure as infants - Romans allowed some form of protection to children with ID born to the wealthy - First systematic and documented program of intervention for ID was developed in France in 1799 - Jean-Marc Itard developed a skill based program for a feral child he named Victor Early years of rehabilitation and reintegration: - In the US through the early and mid-`800s, people with IDs had the chance to be rehabilitated, trained, and reintegrated into society - Dorthea Dix advocated improving treatment of people housed in asylums, poorhouses, country homes, and almshouses in the mid-1800s - Samuel Howe directed the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston, and in 1848 he established the first public training facility in the US for people with ID Segregation, eugenics, and institutionalization - As the US population became more urbanized in the later half of the 1800s, people with more severe ID were less able to adapt to an industrializing, urbanizing, nation where employment depended on intellectual ability rather than physical ability - People with ID were blamed for the poverty, illness, and crime that accompanied urbanization, and therefore a fearful/alarmist attitude toward PWID developed - Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, published Hereditary Genius in 1869, which established a theoretical basis for the heritability of ID and provided a foundation for the eugenics movement - Eugenists concluded that nature (not characteristics of nurture such as poverty, education, or nutrition) determined personality and intellect, so breeding must be managed to prevent the degeneration of the human species - Those who supported the eugenics movement felt that medicine interfered with Darwinian natural selection and kept the weak alive - Felt that mentally retarded/mentally ill people were reproducing faster than valuable productive people and that tey were responsible for escalating costs of schools, prisons, hospitals, and special homes - In response to the eugenics movement, several US states enacted sterilization laws - Indiana passed the nation’s first sterilization law in 1907 for “imbeciles” who had been diagnosed as “unimprovable” - By 1944, 30 states had sterilization laws - In the late 1800s and early 1900s, PWID and others were segregated into institutional settings so as to protect “normal” society from them and to control their reproductive lives - Most common method of controlling reproduction by PWID was segregation in the US, Canada, and Great Britain, through limitations on marriage, immigration controls, sterilization, and custodial institutionalization - Custodial institutions were the means by which feebleminded were removed from a society in which they were perceived as a genetic threat and placed in isolated environments, completely segregated by gender Psychological testing - Development of psychological tests beginning in the early 1900s acted as a doubleedged sword - Improved identification of PWID but increased institutionalization - In 1905, Alfred Binet and Theordore Simon developed a test for identifying French schoolchildren who were thought to be in need of special services - Testing made intellectual disability seem more prevalent, since it identified mildly disabled people who would otherwise not have been given a diagnosis Research refutes heritability of ID - In 1928, research by Penrose and contemporaries revealed multiple etiologies for mental illness including ID, refuting the single-cause explanations that had been common and that eugenics sought to eliminate - In the 1930s and 1940s, non-genetic factors such as metabolic disturbances and environmental factors were recognized as having an association with ID - Studies of institutionalized individuals found that more than half of them had parents without ID, casting doubt on the heritability of ID - In 1930, neurologist Dr. Abraha, Myerson showed that the feebleminded were born in approximately the same proportions in all segments of society, and were not concentrated in the lower classes as the eugenists had suggested. Legal protections and services for PWID - Throughout the 20th century, federal and local legislation in the US codified rights and mandated services for disabled people, eventually including the intellectually disabled. - A special class for people with intellectual disabilities was established in Providence, Rhode Island in 1896 - In 1911, New Jersey mandated that education be provided for students with intellectual disabilities - Vocational Rehabilitation Act, passed in 1920 after wounded soldiers returned from WWI, provided training and protected the rights of people with disabilities - Social Security Act (1935) signalled a more supportive attitude towards people in need - 1950: the National Association for Parents and Friends of Mentally Retarded Children formed to advocate for children and families - The organization now known ar Arc, provides services, coordinates research, and lobbies on behalf of children with ID and their families - By the 1950s, social attitudes towards PWID had developed towards tolerance and compassion, and financial support was made available for programs for them - By 1952, 46 of the 48 states had enacted legislation for educating intellectually disables children, although severely and moderately disabled children were excluded from these benefits Early 1960s- President Kennedy established the President’s Panel on Mental Retardation (now the Presidential Committee on Intellectual Disabilities) thereby setting a national agenda for policy, research, prevention, education, and services Deinstitutionalization and global perspectives - Current research on institutionalized PWID finds that institutional settings can dehumanize residents, and that quality of life, adaptive behavior, and choice making improve when people with ID move out of an institution - Concept of normalization was introduced in Scandinavia in the 1950s, and suggests that people with ID should have access to supports so that they can experience patterns and conditions of everyday life that are as similar as possible to those of mainstream society -