# Intellectual disability - Neurodevelopmental disorders : A group of conditions with onset in the developmental period that produces impairments of social, personal, academic, or occupational functioning. - 19th century: children and adults with intellectual disabilities were ignored or feared even by the medical profession - Intellectual disability : a significant limitation in intellectual functioning and adaptive behaviour which begins before age 18 - global developmental delay - Intellectual disability (ID) is characterized by significant limitations in mental abilities (such as reasoning, planning, and judgment) that result in impairments in adaptive functioning, such as conceptual, social, and practical skills needed to fulfil aspects of everyday life - 50 years: intellectual limitations, deficits in adaptive skills, and early onset. - Importantly, modern definitions of intellectual disability take into account a person's intellectual functioning within the context of what is typical for that individual's peers and culture. Cultural and linguistic diversity, as well as differences in communication, sensory, motor, and behavioural factors, must be carefully considered in determining a deficit or disability (American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities [AAIDD], 2010). - Dr. Samuel G. Howe convinced his contemporaries that training and educating the "feeble- minded" was a public responsibility, and he opened the first humanitarian institution in North America for persons with intellectual disabilities-the Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Youth. - parents began to meet in groups and create local diagnostic and guidance centers to increase the availability of humane care. These groups organized in 1950 to form the National Association for Retarded Children - which quickly established a scientific board made up of representatives from every specialty possible to study, prevent, and care for persons with intellectual disability - These efforts gained momentum when President John F. Kennedy, who had a sister with intellectual disability, formed the President's Panel on Mental Retardation in 1962 and called for a national program to combat intellectual disability ## The Eugenics Scare - Evolutionary degeneracy theory : a pervasive nineteenth century phenomenon - attributed the intellectual and social problems of children with intellectual disability as a regression to an earlier period in human history - J. Langdon H. Down, best known for the clinical description of the genetic syndrome that bears his name, interpreted the "strange anomalies" among his medical sample of persons with intellectual disability as an evolutionary throwback to the Mongol race - While grounded in speculation and misinformed conclusions, evolutionary degeneracy theory and its notion of inferiority received growing support by the late-nineteenth century as an explanation for insanity, mental deficiency, and social deviance. - Eugenics was first defined by Sir Francis Galton (Charles Darwin's cousin) in 1883 as "the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race" - Public and professional emphasis shifted away from the needs of persons with intellectual disability toward a consideration of the needs of society; society was to be protected from the presumable harm done by the presence of these persons in the community. - The appearance, ability,