Cognitive Disabilities and Family Cognitive

Cognitive Disabilities and Family Cognitive Disability and Family Families with a cognitive disability, such as mental retardation, Alzheimer's or related conditions, face many challenges. Families must make many adjustments and must be able to adapt to the condition. Some families adapt easily, while others struggle to come to terms with the reality of the situation. The following will explore literature related to cognitive disability and their families.

Impact on Family The news that one's child has a severe cognitive disability can have a significant impact on the family's ability to adjust. This news means many adjustments and changes in plans for many. Psychologists have searched for ways to measure and predict the ability of families to adjust to cognitive disability in their children. A recent study tested several measurement scales and found that their ability to identify families that are at-risk for maladjustment differ significantly.

Stress in mothers was easier to detect than in fathers (Trute & Hierbert-Murphy, 2005). Anderson, Catroppa, & Morse et al. (2005) investigated factors that help to predict adjustment in families whose child had suffered traumatic brain injury. The impact of the cognitive disability on the family and their ability to access the resources available to them is another key area of research. Improvements to assistive technology and their impact on the person with disabilities and their families is another key area of research into this area.

There are a number of elements involved in the functioning of families with children with cognitive disabilities that have gained academic attention. Many are concerned with how the family manages to function and cope with their circumstances. Anther related area of academic research involving families is the effectiveness of interventions to help families cope with the stress associated with having a child with cognitive disabilities.

Most of the research found in this area worked under the assumption that families experienced a considerable amount to stress associated with the cognitive abilities of one of its family members. This body of research did not consider the possibility that the family would not be stressed by the experience. This factor represents the presence of bias in the body of literature examined. Self-Determinism and Cognitive Disability Another major topic area in the area of cognitive disabilities is the topic the appropriateness of parenting by persons with cognitive disabilities.

This topic drew considerable controversy, particularly in terms of child endangerment and the ability of the person with a cognitive disability to engage in proper parenting behaviors. Feldman, Varfhese, & Rajska (2002), examined the relationships among support, stress, and mother-child interactions in cognitively disabled adults. This study found that the more support the mother had, the more satisfactory her relationship with her child would be. James (2004) found that children of cognitively disabled persons were more likely to have developmental delays, behavior problems, and language delays.

The issue of support was a key theme in studies regarding this topic. Support was found to have a positive correlation to parenting success in persons with cognitive disability (Kroese, Hussein, & Clifford et al., 2002; Lewellen & McConnell, 2002). Self-determinism and individual rights for persons with cognitive disability represents a major area of interest in many academic circles. The key question in this topic area is whether one can deny rights to a person who may or may not meet society's standards for being responsible enough to possess those rights.

Many of the studies found in this area were culturally biased. The results demonstrated that cultural bias plays a key role in whether a person with cognitive disability has the ability to enjoy some of the same rights and privileges of the population that is not cognitively disabled. The key question in this area of research is whether declaring someone mentally incompetent strips them of some basic rights. This research raises many legal questions as well, such as whether limiting the rights of cognitively disabled persons represents discrimination.

The severity of the cognitive disability was a factor that differentiated literature in regards to this factor. The case in point seems to be different for those with a severe disability, as opposed to those with a mild to moderate disability. Discussion Academic literature regarding families living with persons with cognitive disabilities can be divided into two distinctive categories. One group deals with cognitive disability and heir birth family. The other deals with families created through the marriage of two persons with cognitive disabilities.

The diversity of topics within these areas was thin. One could find a number of studies that focused on the same topic within the wider subject area, such as family stress and ability to access services. A number of studies focused on the two major subject areas without much variation. Bias was found in many of the articles that assumed that the family experienced stress when they had someone in the family with a cognitive disability.

Although the research did not approach the topic, it is possible that the degree of severity of the cognitive disability may have an impact on the amount of actual stress experienced by the family. This area would make an excellent topic for future research into the area. One might also attempt to determine if all families with someone with cognitive disabilities actually experiences stress that was assumed to exist in other studies.

It may be that those studies picked a biased sample and that stress may be less of a factor than the current body of literature would have one believe. Research into stress and the families of persons with cognitive disabilities has a considerable amount of consensus among the researchers. They al agree the having a child with disabilities is stressful. However, there is a concern that this consensus may be the result of bias, more than a result of actual research findings.

No researchers could be found that asked the fundamental question of if the family experienced stress as a result of living with someone with cognitive impairment. There may be families where the situation is not as stressful and others that are struggling with the strain. Studies in this area assumed that families were under a high degree of stress. These researchers agreed that the coping abilities of the family and the degree of the mental condition were key factors in the degree of stress experienced.

One of the key areas of research into this area focuses on is the issue of persons with cognitive disabilities having children of their own. This is a highly controversial topic that has developed as a political and social debate as well. This is one area where a lack of consensus exists. The topic is highly emotional, particularly for those that are cognitively impaired and that with to have children and a family of their own.

One of the key observations regarding literature in this area is that researchers tended to take sides early in the study, even before data was collected. This may indicate that a degree of bias was present in those studies. The topic of families and persons with cognitive disabilities was conducted largely by individual researchers, backed by universities. There are a few research foundations that have published information, but the topic has remained a largely academic one.

Much of the research published by organizations appeared in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Some of agencies that have studied the topic of cognitive disability and family are the American Association on Mental Retardation, the Arc of the United States, the President's Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities, and the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Aging with Developmental Disabilities (Family Village, 2006).

These agencies addressed the topic of family and cognitive disability in response to a growing concern for persons with cognitive disabilities and their ability to access quality health care and services. Their sole purpose is to make the lives of those with cognitive disabilities and their families better. One area that was missed in the literature was the effectiveness of various intervention strategies in reducing stress in families with persons with disabilities. It is.