How many retarded people are in the us

One implication of this is that mental retardation is virtually impossible for an adult to fake: when evaluating whether an adult is mentally retarded, testers look not only at I.

Early diagnosis can help the person with mental retardation obtain access to appropriate special education, training, clinical programs, and social services during important developmental years -- as well as through life. With help from family, social workers, teachers, and friends, many mentally retarded people succeed in simple jobs, maintain their own households, marry, and give birth to children of normal intelligence.

There is no "cure" for mental retardation. Characteristics and Significance of Mental Retardation. Although mental retardation of any degree has profound implications for a person's cognitive and social development, it is a condition which in many cases is not readily apparent. While some of the mentally retarded, such as those whose retardation is caused by Down's syndrome or fetal alcohol syndrome, have characteristically distinctive facial features, most cannot be identified by their physical appearance alone.

Unless their cognitive impairment is unusually severe e. Many capital offenders with mental retardation did not have their condition diagnosed until trial or during post-conviction proceedings.

A person with mental retardation, according to one expert, "is always the least smart person in any group. This leads to fear, dependence and an experience of terrible stigma and devaluation. They may wrap themselves in a "cloak of competence," hiding their disability even from those who want to help them, including their lawyers.

At times, even competent lawyers who are anxious to help their clients may fail to identify their clients' retardation or may be unable to access funds for a psychological evaluation. Cruz nonetheless insisted to reporters that, although he was perhaps "slow in reading, slow in learning," he was not mentally retarded. He had gone through much of his schooling allowing his younger sister to complete his homework for him. When he was given papers to read in connection to his case, he would carefully stare at them.

If he was asked a substantive question, he usually responded, "I don't recall. He lied about finishing high school. He was actually in special education classes and did not finish the sixth grade. He was drafted into the army and discharged because of his mental retardation.

He lied about his service record. He often made things up so that people would not suspect mental retardation. The fact that many people with mental retardation can and do live relatively "normal" lives with their families or in the community, coupled with the fact that most of them do not look different from people with average intellectual capabilities, can make it difficult for the public to appreciate the significance of their condition.

But, as the late U. A person with mental retardation will have limitations of a greater or lesser extent in every aspect of cognitive functioning. He or she will have limited abilities to learn including reading, writing, and arithmetic and to reason, plan, understand, judge, and discriminate. Mental retardation truncates the capacity to think about intended actions, to consider their possible consequences, and to exercise restraint.

One expert has summarized the attributes of mental retardation as follows:. Almost uniformly, individuals with mental retardation have grave difficulties in language and communication. They have problems with attention, memory, intellectual rigidity, and in moral development or moral understanding.

They are susceptible to suggestion and readily acquiesce to other adults or authority figures People with mental retardation have limited knowledge because their impaired intelligence has prevented them from learning very much. They also have grave problems in logic, foresight, planning, strategic thinking, and understanding consequences.

Many of these limitations, of course, characterize children. But while children will outgrow these limitations as their brains develop and mature, people with mental retardation will not.

In limiting a person's cognitive development and ability to learn, mental retardation also limits the ability to understand abstract concepts, including moral concepts.

While most defendants with mental retardation who have committed a crime know they have done something wrong, they often cannot explain why the act was wrong. The inability to comprehend abstract concepts may include the inability to fully understand the meaning of "death" or "murder". Before his execution, Mason asked one of his legal advisors for advice on what to wear to his funeral.

At his clemency hearing, the chair of the Louisiana pardons board asked Sawyer if he knew what murder was. Sawyer responded, "That's when the breath leaves your body. Since they often face abuse, taunts, and rejection because of their low intelligence, people with mental retardation can be desperate for approval and friendship.

Eager to be accepted and eager to please, people with mental retardation are characteristically highly suggestible. Washington was so suggestible and eager to please, according to a former employer, that "you could get [him] to confess that he walked on the moon.

L ow intelligence and limited adaptive skills also mean that people with mental retardation often miss social "cues" that other adults understand. Their inappropriate social responses can be misinterpreted by people who do not know they have mental retardation or who do not understand the nature of retardation.

They may act in ways that seem suspicious, even when they have done nothing wrong. When questioned by police or other authority figures, they often smile inappropriately, fail to remain still when ordered to do so, or act agitated and furtive when they should be calm and polite.

Others may fall asleep at the wrong moment. Welcome has mental retardation and, according to psychiatric testimony presented at his trial, has a mental age of eight. He smiled incessantly during his capital murder trial, an almost involuntary defense mechanism developed in response to a lifetime of taunts.

As his defense attorney noted, "Many people with retardation smile a lot They are anxious for approval, and have learned that smiling is one way to get [it]. But they don't have the judgment to know when to smile. He was sentenced to death and remains today on death row.

Trial counsel were not aware that they had mental retardation. But their tendency to sleep peacefully during their trials helped alert post-conviction lawyers to their mental disability. In the case of White, who snored loudly during the penalty phase of his trial, the prosecutor argued that his conduct indicated his lack of remorse for his crime and his lack of respect for the criminal justice system.

Both Fairchild and White were sentenced to death and executed. The vast majority of people with mental retardation never break the law. Although people with mental retardation constitute somewhere between 2. It may also be that some of the people with mental retardation who are serving prison sentences are innocent, but they confessed to crimes they did not commit because of their characteristic suggestibility and desire to please authority figures.

See Section IV below. As with people of normal intelligence, many factors can prompt people with mental retardation to commit crimes, including unique personal experiences, poverty, environmental influences and individual characteristics.

Finally, small rate differences among states can result from other data limitations that reflect the problems intrinsic to complicated state and federal cooperative arrangements. The large state-to-state differences in MR rates in this analysis probably reflect at least some real differences in MR rates e. State-specific variations in the prevalence of MR should be assessed using multiple data sources, and further efforts should seek to explain the largest differences in rates among states and the difference between the rates for children and adults within states.

Some states e. CDC's Metropolitan Atlanta Developmental Disabilities Surveillance Program tracks MR rates for children aged years using multiple data sources and can be used as a model for other areas 8. Improved understanding of the risk factors for MR and the factors influencing rate variations can assist in developing and targeting prevention strategies and efforts. Disability in America: toward a national agenda for prevention.

US Department of Education. To assure the free appropriate public education of all children with disabilities: sixteenth annual report to Congress on the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Frankenberger W, Harper J. State definitions and procedures for identifying children with mental retardation: comparisons of guidelines. Ment Retard ; Social Security Administration. Disability evaluation under Social Security.

SSA Geographic patterns of disability in the United States. Soc Secur Bull ;57 no. McDermott S. Explanatory model to describe school district prevalence rates for mental retardation and learning disabilities. Am J Ment Retard ; Variation in the influence of selected socio-demographic risk factors for mental retardation.

Am J Public Health ; Developmental disabilities. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one in six children had a developmental disability in , ranging from mild disabilities e.

This is due, in part, to an increased number of children being diagnosed with autism. In , the CDC reported that 1 in 88 children were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. There are approximately 57 million people in the United States who are living with one or more disabilities. The Americans with Disabilities Act defines an individual with a disability as: A person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, a person who has a history or record of such an impairment, or a person who is perceived by others as having such an impairment.

Over 6 million individuals in the United States have developmental disabilities.