Mental retardation

Mental retardation (also called mental handicap and, as defined by the UK Mental Health Act (1983), mental impairment and severe mental impairment) is a term for a pattern of persistently slow learning of basic motor and language skills ("milestones") during childhood, and a significantly below-normal global intellectual capacity as an adult. One common criterion for diagnosis of what used to be called mental retardation is a tested intelligence quotient (IQ) below 70.

Traditional terms

The three traditional terms denoting varying degrees of mental deficiency long predate psychiatry. They were originally used in English as simple forms of abuse, and this is still the main usage. Their now obsolete use as psychiatric technical definitions is of purely historical interest. There have been some efforts made among mental health professionals to discourage use of these terms. Note that the term retard or tard is still used as a generic insult, especially among children.

Related Topics:
Psychiatry - English

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• Idiot indicated the greatest degree of mental deficiency, where the mental age is 2 years or less, and the person cannot guard himself against common physical dangers. The term was gradually replaced by the term profound mental disability.
• Imbecile indicated a mental disability less extreme than idiocy and not necessarily inherited. It is now usually subdivided into two categories, known as severe mental retardation and moderate mental retardation.
• Moron was defined by the American Association for the Study of the Feeble-Minded in 1910, following work by Henry H. Goddard, as the term for an adult with a mental age between eight and twelve; mild mental retardation is now the term for this condition. Alternative definitions of these terms based on IQ were also used.