The role of doctors is to help these families find the proper attitude towards their handicapped child. This is why doctors and specialists are duty-bound to communicate to parents any knowledge and advances that concern their children's disability. They should do so in a spirit of service and solidarity, in a compassionate way, using an accessible and comprehensible language, with patience and understanding and with total professional honesty. This ongoing communication of scientific knowledge is essential if parents are to face the reality of their disabled child's situation. Once they have been informed, they can give their child the appropriate education and treatment for his condition.
Families require adequate support from the community.
If families are indispensable in accepting disabled children and raising them, they cannot succeed in achieving fully satisfying results by their own efforts alone. These types of assistance are even more necessary at critical moments of family life, when living together in the family becomes difficult if not impossible. The development of small community structures which can accommodate the disabled child for a time or give him a permanent home after the death of one or both parents is therefore important. Final recommendations Great progress has been made in the integration of the mentally handicapped into the social fabric. However, the ever increasing number of disabled adults in society have inundated care facilities for the handicapped, with little possibility for them to be able to live the end of their life in dignified conditions.