MENTAL RETARDATION IN NON-INSTITUTIONALIZED ADULTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING RESEARCH.
Contributors: Temple University.
Published: 1992
Number of pages: 164
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Health Sciences, Education.; Sociology, Public and Social Welfare.
Description: The purpose of this study was to describe the problem of mental retardation in non-institutionalized adults. The aim of the study was to derive implications for nursing research.

Legislation and court cases were described. The legislation from 1963 to the present provided the impetus for establishing facilities, programs, and services for mentally retarded persons in communities. The courts have found that mentally retarded persons have the right to habilitation and the right to live in communities, that community service should be made available to them, and that qualified professionals, including nurses, should be consulted in treatment decisions. Both the legislation and the courts either directly or indirectly refer to the principle of normalization. Therefore, the principle of normalization according to Wolf Wolfensberger was examined. Wolfensberger's attempt to generalize and "sociologize" normalization fails to incorporate the professional judgment implicit in the legislation and explicit in the court decisions.

The aim of research is toward generating explanations. Research must account for observation whether within an axiomatic-deductive method or an inductive method.

Health care is foundational toward maintenance of equilibrium for the survival of the organism and toward establishing and maintaining equilibrium between the individual and society. The non-institutionalized mentally retarded adult is vulnerable; mental retardation is at present irreversible. Limited health care resources demand coordination of health care services for the compromised non-institutionalized mentally retarded adult. Equilibrium is foundational to the nursing care of the mentally retarded adult and is a probable basis for nursing toward describing its substantive domain relative to the non-institutionalized mentally retarded adult.

Nursing research can inform nursing education and nursing practice in planning for nursing care of the non-institutionalized mentally retarded adult. Nursing can thus demonstrate its "expertise," founded in knowledge of nursing, encouraging other health providers to undertake comparable research toward establishing focus and perspective in interdisciplinary research and planning for the health care of the non-institutionalized mentally retarded adult.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-05, Section: B, page: 2248.

Thesis (ED.D.)--TEMPLE UNIVERSITY, 1992.

School code: 0225.