Mental disability

“ He was well enough to live outside a hospital and also clear-headed enough to know that if he let too many people know how well he really was, he might have to give up his mental disability pension and actually become responsible for himself. ”

“ Nevertheless, while the mental timbre is an independent condition, it does not prevent the introduction of moral qualities also. A person may lose the use of a member, for instance, through loss of consciousness of power in that member, and at the same time she may have so much pleasure in the sympathy which the disability excites in those around her as to prefer to be lame or bedridden. ”

“ For purposes of this paragraph, a physical or mental impairment is an impairment that results from anatomical, physiological, or psychological abnormalities which are demonstrable by medically acceptable clinical and laboratory diagnostic techniques." This statutory definition of disability was taken from Title II of the Social Security Act, 70 Stat. ”

“ In light of this clinical definition of mental retardation, I cannot agree that the undeniable fact that mentally retarded persons have "diverse capacities and life experiences," ante, at 338, is of significance to the Eighth Amendment proportionality analysis we must conduct in this case. "Every individual who has mental retardation"-irrespective of his or her precise capacities or experiences-has "a substantial disability in cognitive ability and adaptive behavior." ”

“ Patient who accepts mental suggestion of disability as reality. Perverted judgment in severe dementias—as influenced by unreasonable fear, hatred, etc.; in all acute insanities—as manifested in inability of patient to rid himself of his delusions. Absence of judgment in all acute insanities; in later dementias. Limitations in many so-called normal and in all the abnormal. Disorders of Emotion Suggestibility in hysteria. Excitement in mania. Depression in melancholia. Phobias as found in psychasthenia. Deficiency as in the apathy of depression. Perversion in mania, in depression, in catatonia. ”

“ Such work is not only for the mentally disordered and those suffering from mental defect, but for all those who, through mental causes, are unable so to adjust themselves to their environment as to live happy and efficient lives. ”

“ FROM what has been said in the foregoing pages, it is an irresistible inference that the greatest of all handicaps a child can have, short of being born hopelessly deficient, is to be born into a home where he will be exposed to mind-deadening or emotion-stressing influences—a home where he will receive neither adequate mental stimulus nor adequate moral training. ”

“ Speaker, October 3-9 is Mental Illness Awareness Week. During any one-year period, up to 50 million Americans--more than 22 percent--suffer from a clearly diagnosable mental disorder involving a degree of incapacity that interferes with employment, attendance at school or daily life. Like so many disorders, mental illness does not discriminate and affects every age, ethnic, and socioeconomic group. ”

“ It is only necessary to add that good authorities estimate that there are over 1,000,000 serious accidents in the United States every year, in order to see that disabilities resulting from accident are prolific as causes of poverty, especially in our large industrial centers. The physical and mental defects which manifest themselves in the defective classes proper, such as the feeble-minded, the insane, the epileptics, the deaf-mutes, and the blind, do not need to be dwelt upon as causes of dependence. ”

“ Once the disability due to suggestion has disappeared spontaneously or by treatment, there may be no obvious conflict left. The instinct of self-preservation, to which his disability has been essentially due, will of course still be there ready to reassert itself if the occasion arise, but any conscious conflict is so readily solved in accordance with obvious standards of social conduct that there is no opening for the occurrence of a state of anxiety sufficiently profound to act as the basis of neurosis. ”

“ Many live in fear that they will lose their jobs, their home, or their health benefits if their condition becomes known. And so too many people with mental illness don't seek treatment that can change their lives, and the vicious cycle of silence, ignorance, and stigma continues. If we are ever going to put an end to this vicious cycle, we have to take responsibility and dispel the myths about mental illness once and for all. ”

“ The doubtfully deficient Y group should include all those who are so intellectually deficient as to be expected to need assistance indefinitely. The feeble-minded, or MENTALLY DEFICIENT, are those who require social care indefinitely because of deficiency in mental development. They include the X group, that portion of the doubtful Y group which is found to require isolation, guardianship or social assistance, and any others not detected by the tests but requiring prolonged social care on account of their failure to develop mentally. ”

“ Feeble-mindedness may, however, arise from epilepsy or from other diseases or accidents in early life as well as from an inherent incapacity for development. 11Moreover, mental deficiency, or feeble-mindedness, (I use the terms interchangeably) does not imply that the social unfitness is always caused by intellectual deficiency. Mind is a broader term than intellect, as we shall note in the next section. ”

“ This made mandatory the exclusion of idiots, imbeciles, the feebleminded, epileptics, insane, all who had been insane within five years and persons having had two or more attacks of insanity at any time, or who were likely to become a public charge, as well as individuals not comprehended in the foregoing excluded classes but found to be suffering from mental or physical defects of such a nature as to affect their ability to earn a living. ”

“ He echoed the word incredulously, as though it were quite new and its meaning not clear. "Is any one ever hampered by love and inspiration and all that——"
"You don't understand," she said. "Nobody can understand physical disability except those who have suffered it. ”

“ Bicêtre.—The reader would be wrong to imagine that in these visits to the hospitals we are forgetting the school cases of mental deficiency; we are at the heart of the question. Whether we are dealing with hospital cases or school cases, there are details of organisation which are the same for all, and there are similar mistakes which we must try to avoid. ”

“ The child who has been handicapped by illness and lack of opportunity, the child who is inherently dull and backward, must be distinguished from the child with nervous instability or definite mental defect. ”

“ In the downward course of mental disease-processes the degeneration is from the complex to the simple, from the stable to the unstable, from the highly organized to the lowly organized. In the different forms of mental diseases first the moral life, then the social instincts become affected, the patient becomes selfish, introspective, morally selfish, then loses all regard for others, becomes careless, wasteful and negligent of his vocations, life-work, and duties ”

“ Every physician of large experience must have seen cases of self-created, unresisted invalidism end with mysterious abruptness and the return of mental, moral and physical competence, under the influence of some call upon their sense of duty made by calamity, such as an acute illness in the household, financial ruin, or the death of a husband. ”

“ Our constituents should not be penalized because they have a mental illness compared to a physical illness. We should ensure that the mental health system provide a more individualized and holistic approach to care without shame or inequity in coverage. Mental illness is like most physical illnesses ”

“ If this is the case with those suffering only from mental deficiency, it is evidently more likely to occur in those suffering from any form of mental disease, which is often liable to change its character, and to pass from the form of depression to one of excitement. ”

“ These inequalities of development may vary to any degree in different subjects. They always produce a want of equilibrium, and this want is the differentiating attribute of the defective child. But to draw a faithful picture we must add yet other traits. According to general opinion, mental deficiency is a disease, and although the idea of disease is very vague, we are inclined to fall in with this general opinion. ”

“ It is a lower degree of the same cause which renders continuous seclusion from society so injurious to both mental and bodily health.”
“Inactivity of intellect and of feeling is a very frequent predisposing cause of every form of nervous disease. For demonstrative evidence of this position, we have only to look at the numerous victims to be found among persons who have no call to exertion in gaining the means of subsistence, and no objects of interest on which to exercise their mental faculties, and who consequently sink into a state of mental sloth and nervous weakness.” ”

“ It is clear that the intention is to distinguish mental deficiency from senile dementia, from hysteria and from insanity, in which there is a temporary or permanent loss of mental ability rather than a failure to develop. ”

“ While we now know that more than one in five Americans experiences some form of mental illness each year, that many mental disorders are biological, and that they can be treated medically, too many people still believe that mental illness is a personal failure. ”

“ Some are benefited by the habits of life that are established as a consequence of the belief that they are about to be cured, while before this they had been largely confining themselves to their houses, and had been refusing to take recreation or get diversion because of the conviction that they were ill. Finally, many of them had no real physical ills, but were suffering from mental ailments brought on by dreads and by a concentration {46} of attention on certain portions of the body which interfered with the normal physiologic action of those parts. ”

“ According to its article 1, "persons with disabilities" include those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others. ”

“ There are those, also, of all ages, who are incapacitated for self-support and for service by disease, or by physical or mental defects such as bodily deformities, blindness, or feeble- mindedness. In addition, there are some who, though physically able to perform service, deliberately prey upon the community in one manner or another without giving anything in return. ”

“ Unless the disorder manifest itself by such maniacal symptoms that no one can be blind to its real character, the wealthier classes especially will shut their eyes to the fact they are so unwilling to recognize, and call the mental aberration nervousness or eccentricity; and as they are unwilling to acknowledge the disorder, so are they equally indisposed to subject it to the most effectual treatment, by removing the patient from home, and the exciting influence of friends and surrounding circumstances in general, to a properly organized and managed asylum. ”

“ Once shrouded in mystery—and spoken of only in sad, hushed tones—mental illness is becoming more widely understood. Thanks to dramatic advances in basic biomedical research and in the behavioral sciences, we have been able to achieve significant improvements in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of emotional and mental disorders. Scientific progress has also helped to alleviate the stigma associated with mental illness, as more and more Americans learn about its origins and effects. ”

“ Just as in the case of physical illness, we need to know not merely that the patient is sick, but also why he is sick, what organs are involved, what course the illness will run, and what physical work the patient can safely undertake, so in the case of a retarded child, we need to know the exact degree of intellectual deficiency, what mental functions are chiefly concerned in the defect, whether the deficiency is due to innate endowment, to physical illness, or to faults of education, and what lines of mental activity the child will be able to pursue with reasonable hope of success. ”

“ In our attempt to interpret the volume of results concerning tested delinquents, we have accepted the common conception that the feeble-minded are those who, through lack of mental development, are social deficients. They cannot survive in society without supervision. In the words of the English Mental Deficiency Act, “they require care, supervision, and control for their own protection or for the protection of others.” Our present scales of development tests do not detect those deficients whose failure is not directly due to intellectual incapacity. ”

“ From these and many another supporting observation, easily and everywhere to be had, it is perfectly legitimate to conclude, beyond reasonable doubt, that mental pain and its resulting invalidism is quite naturally the necessary outcome of a great variety of causes, which may be contributed to, usually, by almost every influence that either bad heredity, accident, disease, wrong education, personal over-stress, or failure, or future uncertainty, may happen to afford. ”

“ Persons of unsound mind—that is, persons who, owing to disorder of the mind, are incapable of managing themselves or their affairs.
"Class II: Persons mentally infirm—that is, persons who, through mental infirmity arising from age or decay of their faculties, are incapable of managing themselves or their affairs. ”

“ Provision for the Feeble-minded is the greatest present need of the charities of the State. Mental defectives are at large all over the State, and they are found in all institutions. They are a source of trouble in the public schools, and are a constant danger to the State. ”