Mental Health & Developmental Disabilities

Mental health and developmental disabilities limit a person's ability to progress emotionally, physically or cognitively. They impact how an individual behaves and thinks, and in some cases, how the individual looks. Depending on the cause and severity of the disability, professionals may be able to offer treatments, but they first must determine which type of disability the individual has. This requires the professional to fall back on basic facts about mental and developmental disabilities.

Mental Health Disability

• Mental health disabilities are conditions that are related to the function of the brain on some level, or how a person processes information. According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), mental health disabilities primarily include mood disorders such as phobias, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. As of 2010, the National Institute of Mental Health also considers conditions such as eating disorders and Alzheimer's Disease as mental disorders or disabilities. These disabilities may occur at any age.

Developmental Disability

• The National Institute of Child Health and Development and the National Institute of Health define developmental disabilities as birth defects that affect the function of part or all of a person's body. The Institute on Community Integration of the University of Minnesota adds that developmental disabilities may be present at birth OR develop during childhood (i.e., before age 22). They claim that there are four types of developmental disabilities, including mental retardation, metabolic disorders, sensory-related disorders and degenerative disorders. Examples include Down Syndrome, cerebral palsy and Williams Syndrome.

Prevalence

• Mental health disabilities are much more common than developmental disabilities. As of 2010, the National Institute of Mental Health estimates that as many as one in four adults (57.7 million people) in the United States has a mental disability of some type in any given year. The Institute on Community Integration claims that as many as six million individuals have developmental disabilities.

Treatments

• The treatments for mental and developmental disabilities include talk and physical therapies, medications and/or surgical procedures. These methods don't necessarily cure the disability, but they greatly impact the symptoms.

Considerations

• Professionals do not know what causes every single mental or developmental disability. For example, some professionals believe that eating disorders are a matter of choice and autism is a side effects of vaccines. Other professionals believe these same disabilities are biologically based. Still other professionals believe they are a combination of both will and biology. This means that professionals need much more research before they can determine the best treatments.

  Those with mental and developmental disabilities face discrimination on a daily basis. For this reason, the United State government has laws protecting those with these disabilities.