Statement About Mental Retardation

THE CRUEL bane of mental retardation---which now afflicts more than 6 million Americans, which weighs heavily on the other millions engaged in helping the retarded as family members, health professionals, and volunteer workers, and which diminishes us all by the toll it takes on human potential in our society---can be sharply reduced during the coming generation. And because it can be, it must be. These are my conclusions after conferring this morning with the members of the President's Committee on Mental Retardation.

Encouraging progress is already being made, both in our efforts to open better lives for the mentally retarded and in our ability to prevent the occurrence of retardation. Federal spending in this field has increased by more than one-third during the past 3 years, to an estimated $668 million in fiscal year 1972.

Today, I pledge continuing expansion of such support, and I invite all Americans to join me in commitment to two major national goals:

• To reduce by half the occurrence of mental retardation in the United States before the end of this century;

• To enable one-third of the more than 200,000 retarded persons in public institutions to return to useful lives in the community.

These goals are realistic and achievable. We already have most of the knowledge and many of the techniques they will require, and the rest are within reach of research.

Improved prevention will require much wider application of recent biomedical advances which can help obstetricians avoid prematurity, a prime cause of retardation; immunization against the rubella and measles so dangerous during pregnancy; and new diet therapy for metabolic disorders. It will also call for improvement in the delivery of medical, nutritional, and educational services to expectant mothers and young children, especially those exposed to a high risk of retardation. And it will take further research in methods of screening, referral, and treatment. But beyond any question, the effort is worth making: for at the present rate of occurrence, more than 4 million of the 142 million children whom demographers estimate will be born in America between now and the year 2000 would grow up retarded. Their future is in our hands.

Unlocking the door to new opportunities for today's institutionalized retarded is an equally worthy challenge, and it is possible in the immediate present. Here State and local governments bear the principal responsibility, but strong Federal leadership can also be important. Within institutions, review procedures aimed at identifying persons ready to enter the community must be improved. Counseling, job training and placement services, and suitable living arrangements must be made available in the community. One measure of the distance we have to go on this front is that nearly half the Nation's school districts still offer no special education classes for the mentally retarded.

To launch this coordinated national effort at reducing mental retardation and ministering more effectively to its victims, I am today initiating a review process throughout the Federal Government. All executive departments and agencies will evaluate their programs--medical, legal, educational, social service, and environmental with a view to providing maximum support to the President's Committee on Mental Retardation, and will report to Secretary Richardson, Chairman of that Committee.

I am also directing that the Department of Justice take steps to strengthen the assurance of full legal rights for the retarded; that the Bureau of the Census take steps to develop more complete data on the extent of mental retardation; and that the Department of Housing and Urban Development assist in the development of special housing arrangements to facilitate independent living for retarded persons in the community.