Mental Challenged Support Group

I agree...I hate the word retardation. Unfortunately it is a techincial or medical term which is used throughout the medical professional. A term that I have becoming more aware of and feel at ease with is "Intellectually Disabled". I work within the field and find this word or term becoming more and more prevalent in literature.

Why not call it Cognitive Developmental Delay. That is the term our pediatrician's use in reference to our son.

it is changing, I am training at Vanderbilt University as certified child advocate and have been told that the term is not being used in the "medical community" much anymore, mentally challenged, mentally delayed, ect. those are a couple that are being used instead. now if we can get the schools to catch on eh?

I also like to use "has mental retardation" or is "intelectually challenged". I think saying someone has mental retardation is ok, as it is what it is called medically, it is just unfortunate that people in society have used shorter variations of the word to be cruel. There are alot of cruel people in the world and I think that compassion needs to be taught in schools.

I agree, it took me a while to find this group on Dailystrength.org because i was typing in development delay!

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It looks like they did change to Mentally Challenged. I reached out because my thought patterns are really gone from too many years of pain pills to get through work. Also, my younger daughter suffers terribly from depression. We are converting a modular home to a duplex so we can help her raise her 9 yr old daughter. My older daughter has a terrible personality disorder but we love her so much and she is so wonderful when she is feeling well.