Distinction From Other Disabilities
Clinically, mental retardation is a subtype of intellectual deficit, which is a broader concept and includes intellectual deficits that are too mild to properly qualify as mental retardation, or too specific (as in specific learning disability), or acquired later in life through acquired brain injuries or neurodegenerative diseases like dementia. Intellectual deficits may appear at any age. Developmental disability is any disability that is due to problems with growth and development. This term encompasses many congenital medical conditions that have no mental or intellectual components, although it, too, is sometimes used as a euphemism for MR.
Read more about this topic: Mental Retardation
Famous quotes containing the words distinction and/or disabilities:
“The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.”
—Don Barthelme (1931–1989)
“A child is not a salmon mousse. A child is a temporarily disabled and stunted version of a larger person, whom you will someday know. Your job is to help them overcome the disabilities associated with their size and inexperience so that they get on with being that larger person.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)