attitude handicapped individual mentally normal papers research towards

Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute Home byMarcia A. Cohen Contents of Curriculum Unit 82.06.08: To Guide Entry Objective The objective of this paper is to help students identify some of their own feelings toward disabled people and become aware of the effect a handicapped child may have on his family.Introduction The birth of a baby is usually anticipated with great excitement and expectations of a future filled with happiness and success. This exuberance may become muted with the birth of a disabled infant. It does not matter if the handicap is blindness, retardation or a physical abnormality. The family into which this child is born will change in some ways. This paper will focus on the effect a handicapped child may have on his family. (Masculine pronouns will be used throughout the paper for continuity and because a slight majority of handicapped children are male.) A particular disability will not be addressed because parental reaction to almost any disability appears to follow certain stages. Research seems to indicate that the severity of the handicap and the degree of dependency by the child on his family is the most important factor in his acceptance, than whether he has cerebral palsy or spina bifida. Having a handicapped child born into a family and grow into adulthood is one of the most stressful experiences a family can endure. Parental reactions to the realization that their child is exceptional usually include shock, depression, guilt, anger, sadness, and anxiety. Individuals handle each of these feelings differently and may stay in certain stages longer than others. Some parents perceive the handicapped infant as an extension of themselves and may feel shame, social rejection, ridicule or embarrassment. Parental reactions may be affected by economic status, personality traits and marital stability. In short, an initial parental response may be a form.
The present paper provides a review of research on medical students’ attitudes to people with intellectual disabilities. The attitudes of medical students warrant empirical attention because their future work may determine people with intellectual disabilities’ access to healthcare and exposure to health inequalities. An electronic search of Embase, Ovid MEDLINE(R), PsycINFO, Scopus, and Web of Science was completed to identify papers published up to August 2013. Twenty-four studies were identified, most of which evaluated the effects of pedagogical interventions on students’ attitudes. Results suggested that medical students’ attitudes to people with intellectual disabilities were responsive to interventions. However, the evidence is restricted due to research limitations, including poor measurement, self-selection bias, and the absence of control groups when evaluating interventions. Thus, there is a dearth of high-quality research on this topic, and past findings should be interpreted with caution. Future research directions are provided.KeywordsMedical students; Attitudes; Intellectual disabilities; Healthcare; Health inequalitiesPeople with intellectual disabilities (ID) experience more health inequalities than persons without disabilities (Cooper, Melville, & Morrison, 2004). For example, they have a shorter life expectancy than people without ID (Emerson & Baines, 2010). Negative attitudes among healthcare staff towards the provision of healthcare to this population are a likely contributing factor in the health inequalities that they experience (Ditchman et al., 2013 and Emerson and Baines, 2010). An attitude is a “psychological tendency, expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favour or disfavour” (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993, p. 1). While doctors play a key role in their healthcare, and teaching on ID often is part of medical schools’.
References Articles: Marie Yazbeck, Keith McVilly, and Trevor R. Parmenter Attitudes Toward People with Intellectual Disabilities: An Australian Perspective Journal of Disability Policy Studies Fall 2004 15: 97-111, doi:10.1177/10442073040150020401 Abstract Full Text (PDF) References.