Disability is not Inability

:: Mental Retardation in Kenya

Increasingly in the west, children with mental retardation are being taught in regular classrooms…

When I first read this I a book educational psychology by John Santrock McGraw Hill 2004, I experienced a mixture of emotions and frustrations common with disability issues in developing countries like Kenya. I was curious and wanted to know how they are doing it.

While mental disabilities is on the increase in kenya, there are few if any research to define causes, categories, needs and educational requirements. We still look at it from cultural perspectives that glorify witchcraft and curses. Disability in Kenya has not reached a point in which it is put in a context of what is happening and how do we deal with it… This is more a problem of development paradigm than of disability itself. Governments do not view power as an instrument to improve livelihoods of the population.

But before you learn how help; you will realize they had to first deeply understand causes and types of Mental Retardation. They are then classified and built specific methods according to needs. The most distinctive feature of mental retardation is inadequate intellectual functioning …

In the last few years there has been an increase in mental challenges in Kenya. Actually a large section of new patients with disabilities are mentally challenged. Mental Retardation however is related to childhood development.

In developing countries where formal tests are neither developed nor widespread used to access intelligence like the ones carried out at the dilapidated Mathare Mental Hospital off Thika Road in Nairobi. Mental retardation can be identified by a lack of age-appropriate skills in learning and in caring for themselves.

The developed countries created intelligence tests, assigned numbers to indicate how mild or severe the retardation was. A child might be only mildly retarded and able to learn in a regular classroom, or severely retarded and unable to make any useful benefit from that setting.

Such tests and classification systems are very necessary in developing countries like Kenya. The Ministry of Education or National Council for persons with disabilities (NCPWDs) needs systems which not only monitor but promote support structures that ensure productive life as part and parcel of registration of PWDs.

In addition to low intelligence, deficits in adaptive behaviour and developmental onset also are included in the definition of mental retardation. Adaptive skills include skills needed for self care and social responsibility such as dressing, toileting, feeding, self-control and peer interaction.

We need to build sustainable structures that identify, measure, prescribe and monitor mental retardation from childhood to adulthood. Registration ACT and Registration Policy at the NCPWD need to be expanded and built to supports community at district level to effectively care for lives of children with mental retardation lead a productive life.

:: Mental Retardation in Kenya

:: Mathari Mental Hospital

:: Causes and Classification

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