The Mentally Handicapped And Inclusion.

Promoting Mental Health and Well-being in Disability Inclusion Efforts

 

Also, do people realize how much things have changed, in even the past 50 years. Maybe even less. All the text books in my HS and college even, have such large print. In universities like Oxford and Yale, they have smaller print. Those old men have to wear their spectacle to read them. But they can fit more information into a smaller space.

And cartoons. My HS had cartoons on all the walls. Tell me, people here. Did your HS have cartoons on the wall? Oxford doesn't. Although I have heard some intellectuals say their favorite book is "The Little Engine That Could". They mean they like the message. Or that considered college level now?

 

Have to include this:

Also, I might as well bring this up here. As I tell people, people have all my life have told me they thought I was dumb or mentally deficient. My earliest memories of this, or at least of people thinking I was different in some way, go back to age 4. I always thought I had something undiagnosed. I did actually, Schizotypal Personality Disorder. My therapist told me in 2011 shortly after my father died I was just never told. In 1991, I thought I might be borderline mentally deficient. I took computer and calculus courses at U of M/Dearborn. I actually want several levels up in Calculus at U of M. And I never had any problem in school. Anyways, I am not even sure now what my full diagnosis. Maybe nobody knows. In 2011 my neurologist told me I have cerebral palsy too. Which does make me stumble around a little and slur my speech, a little. Also one doctor told me recently, borderline mental deficiency is really not considered a diagnosis now anyways. Actually a CC psychology teacher told me basically the same thing in 1995. (As I said, in 1991 I thought I might be that.)

Anyways, the police in a local city pulled me over in 2001. And they asked me if I was mentally deficient. I told them no, not as far as I know, for the reasons I just gave above. Then they kept asking me again and again. I finally said, I do go to community college. I thought if they still wondered, they could check my record. My CC would have my U of M record too, I thought. Then they kept asking me over and over again. Yes, we know you hold the status of a normal person. But you're still "secretly" mentally deficient, aren't you? No one's around. Take your time, you can tell us. They kept saying.

What was THAT all about? How could a person be "secretly" mentally deficient? And do well on their SAT's and go to U of M?

 

BTW, Shakespeare may have been intellectually disabled. I'm serious. That's the real reason they think Francis Bacon wrote his plays. People even today just think his signature is very "unusual" (from a medical standpoint). He did write the plays though.

 

I had an uncle who was determined to have the mind of a 6-year old. His mother had pneumonia when she was pregnant with him in 1920. He lived to be 75. He was the most fun person to be with I have ever known. He lived in a small town in rural Oklahoma and he could run errands for people, like going to the post office and getting their mail and taking to their house. There was no door to door mail delivery like we have today. He never seemed to think of himself as mentally handicapped. Today, if a pregnant woman was told she will have a mentally handicapped baby, she would very likely have an abortion. It's like as a society we have made the collective decision that we don't want these types of people to be born. It's sad because living with mentally handicapped people makes us more human in a way that we seem to be rapidly losing as a society.

 

Ah well the flipside to that is when society INCLUDING the parents give up and because they can no longer care for them or choose not to, I lived and worked that scenario for several years , 12 individuals ranging from early teens to late 50's only one of which ever had contact with any relative's, none had any prospect of life outside of the group home environment now the lower functioning ,for them it did not matter they simply did not know any better BUT for the ones just capable enough to grasp the situation BUT unable to integrate into society, it was terrible

 

And Shakespeare. His plays include people who today would probably be called physically or mentally handicapped (more on that in general below). In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act I, Scene 2, two the players they hired for the wedding scene, Snug and Quince, have this discussion:


"Have you the lion’s part written? Pray you, if it
be, give it me, for I am slow of study."

"You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but
roaring."


People usually say Shakespeare was only making fun of rival playwrights and actors. But he did make fun of himself and his own players in his plays. As he did in this scene from the same play:


"Get you gone, you dwarf,
You minimus of hind’ring knotgrass made,
You bead, you acorn."


Lysander is saying (in Act III, Scene 2) that the woman trying to win his affections, Hermia is too short. The joke being the male actor Shakespeare chose to play her part was unusually tall. Only men were allowed to play in plays back then, including the female roles. And sometimes Shakespeare had to use a taller man to fill a role. Typically though he chose men who were short and effeminate. And some of them player those parts quite convincingly, people often say.

On the subject of mental issues and disabilities, Shakespeare does allude to Bipolar Disorder in Hamlet in this exchange between Hamlet and Ophelia in Act 3, Scene 2:


"Lady, shall I lie in your lap?"

"No, my lord!"

"I mean, my head upon your lap."

"Ay, my lord."

"Do you think I meant country matters?"

"I think nothing, my lord."

"That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs."

"What is, my lord?"

"Nothing."

"You are merry, my lord."


"Country matters" is a play on the C-word. And Ophelia at that point thinks Hamlet is having issues that day, so she tells he is "merry" and gets up and walks away.

Bipolar Disorder hadn't even been discovered yet. But Shakespeare was a keen observer of human behavior. Lady Macbeth obviously had OCD, Julius Caesar and Othello had epilepsy. And Sir John Falstaff, from Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2, and The Merry Wives of Windsor, was clearly today what we would call morbidly obese.

And there are physical handicaps and conditions too. The Duke of Gloucester from Richard III is blind, Julius Caesar is hard of hearing, and the character Katherine from The Taming of the Shrew walks with a limp.