Mental retardation can be caused by environmental factors, genetic factors or a combination of both. Environmental factors include everything that goes on around a person. Those factors could include an infection during pregnancy, a lack of oxygen at birth, encephalitis, meningitis, lead poisoning, alcohol, drug abuse or poor parenting. Genetic factors are specific traits or characteristics a person inherits from both parents at conception. Both genetic and environmental factors can combine to cause mental retardation.
Some pregnant women can take certain types of medication and have perfectly normal babies.
Others may be allergic to or suffer severe side effects from the same medication and have a baby with mental retardation. While people with mental retardation and other developmental disabilities may learn more slowly than other people, they have many of the same hopes, fears, joys, problems and needs that others do. People with developmental disabilities have talents and abilities that should be developed through individualized education, job training and physical, occupational, music, speech and recreational therapies. The end result of education, training and therapy is a better, more normal life for people who have the same rights and responsibilities as anyone else. It is a life that should not be denied to people who have developmental disabilities.