Mental Retardation and Dental Services

Mental retardation is not a term that is currently commonly used. Instead, it has generally been replaced by the concept of developmental disabilities which covers a range of conditions. The term "mental retardation" has been associated with stigma and stereotypes, and often interferes with people's perceptions of individual children or adults. It can cover a wide continuum of potentialities and personalities, although all involve some developmental

There has been considerable work recently to redefine the concept of mental retardation. The definition of mental retardation before 1992 focused on a deficiency model, indicating that those with below average intelligence, or intelligence below an IQ of 70, were mentally retarded. The new definition, developed by the American Association of Mental Retardation emphasizes adaptive skills and support needs instead. At the same time, it does not raise the IQ limit nor does it eliminate it. Instead, it expands the way that people think about

mental retardation in order to create a new support model. In order to diagnose a child as mentally retarded, a three-step process is followed in which functional strengths and weaknesses are identified by using 4 different dimensions and 10 adaptive-skill areas. This provides a much more useful understanding of the child's capacities and limitations. However, this new definition is not widely accepted yet, even though it

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be seen by community dentists seeking services. The authors indicate that this requires community dentists to reevaluate their own perceptions of children with mental retardation, trying to set aside stereotypes and fears in order to more adequately serve this population. There are a wide range of needs within the population, with the more severely retarded children and adults suffering from worse oral health. For example, in creating dental health profiles of a population with mental retardation in Israel, the authors noted that the M-T was 10.70 for the educable group compared with 5.52 for the group with mental retardation along with severe physical handicap. Interestingly enough, the educable group had the most sextants with no teeth. However, throughout the population there were significant treatment needs, with a participant mean of 3.32 for restorations and 0.61 for restorations (Shapira et al., 1998). Another study exploring differences in dental health within a population of non-institutionalised mentally handicapped adults attending day centers found significance difference in oral health depending upon the sub-group to which the individual belonged. The author indicated that the population - although all c

Category: Psychology - M