Intellectual Disability Defined

Intellectual Disability is char­ac­ter­ized by ​“sig­nif­i­cant lim­i­ta­tions both in intel­lec­tu­al func­tion­ing and in adap­tive behav­ior, which cov­ers many every­day social and prac­ti­cal skills. This dis­abil­i­ty orig­i­nates before the age of 18.” (Source: The American Association for Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 2010).

Intellectual dis­abil­i­ty is not a men­tal ill­ness. See DPIC’s page on Mental Illness for more information.

Intellectual dis­abil­i­ty is now the cor­rect term for describ­ing sig­nif­i­cant lim­i­ta­tions in both intel­lec­tu­al func­tion­ing and adap­tive behav­ior. Many court deci­sions, laws, and oth­er offi­cial doc­u­ments were writ­ten using the pri­or des­ig­na­tion of ​“men­tal retar­da­tion.” The shift to the new ter­mi­nol­o­gy was giv­en impe­tus when the American Association on Mental Retardation (AAMR) changed its name to the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD) in 2007. AAIDD has tak­en the posi­tion that the mean­ings of the two terms are iden­ti­cal: ​“At the heart of this shift is the under­stand­ing that this term cov­ers the same pop­u­la­tion of indi­vid­u­als who were diag­nosed pre­vi­ous­ly with men­tal retar­da­tion in num­ber, kind, lev­el, type, and dura­tion of the dis­abil­i­ty and the need of peo­ple with this dis­abil­i­ty for indi­vid­u­al­ized ser­vices and sup­ports,” Robert Schalock et al., ​“The Renaming of Mental Retardation: Understanding the Change to the Term Intellectual Disability.”

DPIC will endeav­or to use the term ​“intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty,” while rec­og­niz­ing the use of ​“men­tal retar­da­tion” in court deci­sions and oth­er quoted materials.