How To Properly Communicate About Individuals With Intellectual Disabilities

By Daphne Bowen


Words, whether they're written or spoken, can affect an individual tremendously. Like any person, individuals with intellectual disabilities can be affected negatively or be hurt just by the way one talks about them. Many at times, topics or subjects about these vulnerable people are handled carelessly.

To clarify, intellectual disability is different from mental illness. Intellectual disability is to have poor scholarly capacity joined with impedance in adjusting to the ordinary social environment. Reasons may incorporate brain damage or hindered advancement as a youngster. Mental illness happens regularly amid pre-adulthood, generally during critical moments of a person's life. Persons with Mental illness even have excellent scholastic record and may lead a seemingly ordinary life.

Education is very vital when talking about people who are intellectually challenged. If it's truly the desire of your heart to uplift and protect the morale of those who fall within the bracket of this vulnerable group, there are so many ways that can be done. This write-up isn't just for journalists, but for those with access to to the social media as well or those with the ability to converse with others. Yes! Everyone. Here are some points worth noting if you want to be able to communicate with people with intellectual disabilities.

When talking or writing about them, avoid using the words: "retarded, mentally ill, abnormal, insane" or any other term that is synonymous to these. Once a person is labeled retarded, he is misconstrued to be a nuisance and a burden. This isn't the case as many people with intellectual disabilities, look after themselves and strive hard to be good in school.

Grown-ups and youngsters with scholarly incapacities are not the same. They are still in different wavelength and must be dealt with accordingly. At the point when a columnist is composing an article around a mentally challenged grown-up, he must utilize the full name of the individual, for example, John Doe rather than simply John.

It is not good to see or portray the life of these persons in an overly dramatic fashion, full of suffering, especially from the family's perspective, and melancholic. This must be avoided at all cost as a lot of those families do not live in such a manner. All the necessary support is received from such families in order to ensure the child has that positive relationship their caretakers and families.

Just a fraction of people in a particular community know a family that has a person who is intellectually challenged. It is also the responsibility of social media users and writers to enlighten the society and portray these persons in every aspect of life, i. E at work, being part of a crowd or at home. It does not help their image much keeping them in the hospitals or associating them with those treatment facilities for long term.

Avoid the terms "victim of", "suffering from", or "unfortunate" when creating write ups about them or talking about them in public. Firstly, because intellectual disability is not a kind of sickness. Secondly, the negative connotation is only how people see them not how those victims see themselves.

All the points enumerated above can be very limiting. However, it is important that more articles are written about them. They usually tend to reflect how society look at them: neglected. So, in order to make their spirit come alive, it is best to write about them more in a positive and encouraging manner.




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