The mentally backward child.

Abstract

From time to time various terms have been used to denote intellectual backwardness in a child. These include amentia, mental deficiency, mental subnormality, mental retardation, idiocy, oligophrenia, feeble-mindedness and more recently mental handicap. All these terms have their limitations and negative connotations. Moreover, all these terms used to describe the arrested or retarded mental development refer to the backwardness of the child in relation to other children of his own age group and thus they are relative terms. Such backwardness is reflected in the rate of maturation of the mental faculties, learning capacities, emotional adjustment, socioenvironmental adaptation and all other factors which contribute to proper intellectual and socio-psychological functioning of the child. At the present moment the classification of diseases by the World Health Organization and classification of mental illnesses by the American Psychiatrist Association designating the degree of severity by neutral terms llke borderline, mild, moderate, severe and profound is the most acceptable one. Such classification is based on the Intelligence Quotient (I.Q.) level as assessed by various psychometric methods, though there are several limitations of the currently employed I.Q. tests. Concepts of intellectual capability based on the criterion of social adaptability