Mental Retardation

My experiences working at the Lubbock State School did much to shape my worldview to this day.

During the two week training class they had us convinced of two things. The first thing is that retarded people were going to kick our asses. This is something that may be hard to imagine, but let me help you out. Retarded people age normally, a 25 your old retarded man is just as big as a 25 year old man. There are just as many 6'4 250 lbs. retarded people as there are 6'4 250 lbs. people in general. Retarded people can get really big, and since their cognitive abilities are hindered, they can be extremely agressive. Imagine a 6'4 250 lbs. 2 year old, it can be a bit of a nightmare. The second thing they convinced us of was that if we did anything about it we would be charged with criminal abuse and neglect charges.

I was scared out of my mind.

The dorms that we worked at in the Lubbock State School were divided by function of the clients. And when I say client or individual it means retarded person. Some dorms were non-ambulatory which means that these were adults who had to be fed and have their diapers changed. I did not work at one of these dorms, at least not usually.

The other dorms were divided by age and intellectual ability. There was one dorm that had clients that were able to walk and could be very agressive, but crapping themselves was normal but being able to talk was not. There were two dorms where the clients were very high functioning, meaning if you just saw them for 20 or 30 minutes in the real world you would think that they were just like everyone else. But these clients were really special, because in many cases their retardation was not discovered until they committed a crime or were arrested.

I worked on one of these dorms.

It would be important now to provide the clinical definition of mental retardation. To be retarded you have to have an IQ of 70 or less. For perspective 80-100 is normal. You have to have demonstrated this before the age of 18. So if I stab you in the brain, and your IQ drops to 12, but you are 18, then you are not mentally retarded. You are just brain damaged.

The dorm I worked on had one client who had destroyed his brain by huffing spray paint. He was a very tragic case. It included a client who had been sold into prostitution as a child by his own family. It included at least two sexual predators, clients who had actually sexually molested children. It included lots of violent clients as well.

Everyone who worked on the dorm it seemed had a happy face scar somewhere on them. Why am I talking about a happy face scar? Because this is what a scar from a human bite that breaks the skin looks like. Thats right.

Most of the orderlies who worked at the Lubbock State School were regular working class folks. There was a lot of disconnect between the orderlies and the administration. The administration avoided the clients like the plague, and treated the orderlies like they were somewhere between mental retardation and normal people. It was very condesending.

In my earliest days at the Lubbock State School I saw a pregnant co-worker kicked extremely hard in the stomach by an outraged client who was strong enough to toss a steel school desk.

I personally do not have a happy face scar. But I have had some scary situations with agressive clients.

So this is the setup, I wanted to get you guys on the page to understand what it was like, so I can discuss its impact on my worldview.