Misdiagnosis in Modern Times
Unfortunately, this type of misdiagnosis still occurs in developing countries from time to time. It is not unusual even today, to discover deaf children in homes for mentally retarded in developing countries. In the former Soviet Union orphanage system, children were frequently misdiagnosed around the age of four and moved to homes for the mentally retarded. Even a medically advanced country like the United States is not immune from making misdiagnoses. The December 1998 newsletter of the Disability Advocates/Consultants of South Texas reported that around 1994, a child who had been labelled mentally retarded was found to have a moderate hearing loss instead.
From About Deafness visitors:
...I really related to your story about misdiagosed children (deaf, labeled retarded). I found out about my hearing problem in 2nd grade. In 4th grade, my teacher would hit me and call me retarded, because I didn't hear her. She didn't believe I was deaf, she thought I was ignoring her or stupid. All my childhood classmates from then on treated me like I was stupid. When I graduated from high school, with a Regents Scholarship, one of my classmates (who I had gone to school with since grammar school) stopped me in the hall to congratuate me, and she said to me that she was surprised I won that scholarship, as she really thought I was retarted. That is when I realized that my whole life was affected because of that one teacher.
...I was born with a mild hearing loss and no one picked up on it. When I was in the first grade the teachers thought I was mentally retarded. They advised my parents to put me into a mental institution, my parents said she was not mentally retarded that you had to get her attention and then she would get it. My father taught me in one night what the teachers should have taught me in six weeks. The next day I read for the teacher and she said that I memorized it. She sent me to the principal's office where I had to read front to back, back to front, and middle to the back of the book before they were convinced that I could read. They called my parents in to the office. I can just imagine what my father said when mother told him we had to go to the school. All of my life I have had to prove to people that I am not mentally retarded. I have had two supervisors who told me they thought I was mentally retarded and one was surprised that I wasn't.
Are you a deaf adult who was misdiagnosed as mentally retarded as a child or was someone in your family misdiagnosed? Share your experience or the experience of your relative, with About Deafness readers.
