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Mental Retardation and Mental
Illness
What's the Difference?
a fact sheet for print and
broadcast journalists
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Mental Retardation |
Mental Illness |
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1. Mental retardation* refers to subaverage intellectual functioning. |
1. Mental illnesses are medical conditions that
disrupt a person’s thinking, feeling, mood, ability to relate to
others, and daily functioning. Just as diabetes is a disorder of the
pancreas, mental illnesses are medical conditions that often result
in a diminished capacity for coping with the ordinary demands of
life. Mental illness has nothing to do with intelligence.
Serious mental illnesses include major depression,
schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD),
panic disorder, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and
borderline personality disorder. |
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2. Mental retardation refers to impairment in social adaptation. |
2. A person with a mental illness may be very competent socially,
but may have a character disorder or other aberration. |
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3. National incidence: 3% of the general population. Ohio incidence:
1.4 to 1.9% of the general population of Ohio is estimated to
have severe functional limitation due to mental retardation or
other developmental disabilities. |
3. Mental disorders fall along a continuum of
severity. Even though mental illness disorders are widespread in the
population, the main burden of illness is concentrated in a much
smaller proportion — about 6 percent, or 1 in 17 Americans — who
suffer from a serious mental illness. It is estimated that mental
illness affects 1 in 5 families in America. |
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4. Mental retardation is present at birth or occurs during the
period of development. |
4. Mental illnesses can affect persons of any age,
race, religion, or income. Mental illnesses are not the result of
personal weakness, lack of character, or poor upbringing. Mental
illnesses are treatable. Most people diagnosed with a serious mental
illness can experience relief from their symptoms and manage
symptoms by actively participating in an individual treatment plan. |
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5. In mental retardation, some degree of intellectual impairment
can be expected to be permanent. |
5. Individuals with mental illness and their families
receive support and services from private practice, their local
mental health authority (which may be county-based or regional) and
the Ohio Department of Mental Health.** |
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6. A person with mental retardation can be expected to behave
rationally at his/her functional level. |
6. A person with mental illness may vacillate between normal
and irrational behavior. |
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7. People with mental retardation can also experience different
types of mental illness with symptoms such as hallucinations
or severe depression, secondary to the condition of mental retardation. |
7. The term mental illness covers a wide variety of symptoms
that may indicate that someone is in emotional trouble, including:
belligerence, excessive moodiness, suspicion and mistrust, or
poor emotional control. |
*Mental retardation is a developmental
disability. People with developmental disabilities may experience
difficulty in such areas as self-care, language, mobility, learning,
self-direction, independent living or self-sufficiency. Some
common developmental disabilities in addition to mental retardation
are epilepsy, autism, cerebral palsy, learning disabilities,
and Tourette syndrome.
**Additional resources: NAMI –
www.nami.org
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Serving People With Developmental Disabilities and Mental
Illness (February 2002)
http://www.mh.state.oh.us/medicaldirdiv/documents/mimr02282002.pdf
(Ohio Department of Mental Health) |