By Ian Miller
It’s a fact: people with intellectual disabilities (ID) have always been here! But the current movement of acceptance and support has, unfortunately, been a recent development. The history of intellectual disabilities in the United States has been a long, storied (and often unkind) road, as this article will briefly explore. (Note: in the interest of historical accuracy, this article will use some terminology in a medical context that, today, is seen as offensive against people with ID.)
According to the Cleveland Clinic, the threshold for having an intellectual disability is defined as being “when limitations in your mental abilities affect intelligence, learning and everyday life skills.” ID affects approximately 1-3% of children born each year, and it is a lifelong condition. Signs of ID in children can appear as a delay in learning to walk, talk, and other early-life skills, having difficulty in understanding social cues and behaviors, having difficulty in school, etc… According to HealthyPlace.com, “Over 545,000 children between the ages of 6 and 21 have some type of intellectual disability and need special education services in public school.”
The roots of the modern ID support movement (and other neurological and mental health conditions) began in the 1840s, when a “mental hygiene” movement began appearing in the United States, first illustrated by “a book entitled ‘Mental hygiene or an examination
of the intellect and passions designed to illustrate their influence on health and duration of life.’” Clifford Whittingham Beers (March 30, 1876 – July 9, 1943) published “A Mind that Found Itself” in 1908, based on his experiences of being admitted to various mental hospitals of the time, which led to the founding of several “mental hygiene” societies around the country.
This new “mental hygiene” movement was an important step in the right direction, but the terminology was, admittedly, lacking: medical literature of the time casually and clinically referred to their patients as “morons” (moderate impairment in functioning), imbeciles (slightly lower-functioning individuals), and “idiots” (very low-functioning individuals); this roughly corresponds to the modern ID degrees of mild, moderate, and severe/profound. Today, these same terms are seen as very stigmatizing and unkind to people with ID and other neurodevelopmental conditions.
As medical science improved, so did the treatment of people with neurodevelopmental conditions. At first, people with mental illnesses (which, unfortunately, often lumped in people with ID and other related conditions) were placed away from society in institutions, sometimes for the rest of their lives; eventually, this came to be seen as cruel and unhelpful, and new community-based treatment models were created in the 1980s, with the “deinstitutionalization” movement.
Today, uniquely abled people of all types are seen as equal and valued members of our communities, so we’ve come a long way. The Golden Scoop is proud to offer uniquely abled people with ID opportunities for equal employment, and we recognize their incredible
skills as workers! Every day, they bring our mission to life with a smile.
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Intellectual disability. (2025, September 11). Cleveland Clinic. https://my.clevelandclinic.
org/health/diseases/25015- intellectual-disability-id -
What is Intellectual Disability? (n.d.). https://www.psychiatry.org/
patients-families/ intellectual-disability/what- is-intellectual-disability -
Bertolote, J. (2008). The roots of the concept of mental health. World Psychiatry, 7(2), 113–116. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.
2051-5545.2008.tb00172.x -
What is an Intellectual Disability? | HealthyPlace. (2022, January 10). https://www.healthyplace.com/
neurodevelopmental-disorders/ intellectual-disability/what- is-an-intellectual-disability- 0
Find the Golden Scoop at these locations:
9540 Nall Avenue
Overland Park, Kansas 66207
913-284-804410460 W 103rd Street
Overland Park, Kansas 66214
913-232-9639Hours:
Monday – Closed
Tuesday-Saturday: 8am-7pm
Sunday @103rd: 9am-5pm
Sunday @ 95th: 1pm-5pm
