How Learning Disability Affects a Person's Mental Health

[HereSince1628]

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/barbara-arrowsmithyoung/canadian-mental-health-week_b_3224386.html

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Imagine constantly straining to understand. Imagine missing important instructions, subtle comments, the tone of someone's voice or the logical consequence of an event. Imagine forgetting the main point of the conversation or task, the details provided, or the very look or place of objects. Imagine seeing everything through a fog, or as black or white. Imagine being only more aware that everyone else understood, while you were miles behind.

Now consider whether a secure self-concept could possibly grow from this experience. Indeed, those of us with learning disabilities will experience diminishing self-esteem from an early age. After years of frustration and frequent failure, any optimism towards ourselves or our future is out of the question. Instead, we just try to survive. Our mechanisms include fear, performance anxiety, obsessive tendencies, and avoidance strategies. For many, it can spiral to more chronic anxiety and depression. Addictions, self-injury, aggression, and other anti-social behaviours have been statistically linked to learning disabilities.

Various estimates put the percentage of the general population affected by learning disabilities around 10 per cent, give or take. I believe that these figures are under-reported, and that the true figure is somewhere between 10 and 20 per cent. Certainly the rates between learning disabilities and depression have been documented and are high. I also believe that many are suffering in silence.

As a society we must reconsider behaviours that are too often seen as lazy, unmotivated, defiant, or just not trying hard enough. One of my students shared that he had been told he was 'garbage' by a college professor. With these experiences repeated over time, other people's perceptions of a student often become internalized by that student. How could they not? This is one way that lack of understanding contributes to a climate of stigma and shame around learning disabilities. There is clearly a parallel between the discrimination felt by individuals with learning disabilities and those who endure the stigma of mental illness.

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