Disability is not Inability

:: Mental retardation

Mental Retardation is a condition with an onset before age eighteen that involves low intelligence (usually below 70 on a traditional individually administered intelligence tests and difficulty in adapting to everyday life.

There are two main scientific proved causes of mental disabilities. They are Genetic factors and factors related to brain damage.

Mental Retardation in Africa is said to be also caused by bad spirirts which may have been communicated or transferred by other person due to one reason or another. Your child, it may be said may be affected by some cultural practice that you did or some person who did something to you and it affected your child.

There are few scientific proof of these and this may be subject to much debate. But irrespective of the causes, it is important that we learn to take care of the child or individual to enable him/her live an acceptable social life.

The low IQ and low adaptiveness should be evident in childhood, not following a long period of normal functioning that is interrupted by an accident or any other type of assault on the brain.

:: Mental Retardation in Kenya

:: Mathari Mental Hospital

:: Causes and Classification

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