Mentally challenged and awareness level

Speech Pathologist Mrs.Richa Deshmukh with Shrish our student.

One of my friend asked me, what do you do in awareness meetings? why do you require this in educated population? Do we not know enough about this problem? I asked in turn, what do you thing about mental disability? He replied, it is a mental disease and should be treated properly. One of the leading pediatrician asked me during awareness talk, do they[Mentally challenged] improve? Is it worth spending time and money in this effort? It amuses me so much, that so called literate people know so little about this disability. There are no official surveys under taken on national level. But unofficial estimate sugests the prevalence rate of mental disability between 2.5 to 3%. Even if we consider with the lower figure of 2.5%, even then in India the total number is likely to be more then 25 million. And inspit of such a high prevelance rate, the awareness level is abismaly low. Infact, the problem of mentally challenged is so complex that, it is next to imposible to explain in one talk, one meeting or one writing. Two mentally challenged are not similar and thus do have different problems. Thus it becomes very difficult to understand and get along with mentally challenged.