Publications - Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

Help your Intellectually Disabled Child Handle Bullying, by Marie Hartwell-Walker, Ed.D., PsychCentral, May 17 2016.

“The chant is a lie! It may make for a great retort on the playground. It may comfort the adults who teach their children the rhyme to think that their children have a response to ugly taunts. But it does nothing to soothe the wounds and heal the hurts of verbal abuse and exclusion. How do you help your intellectually disabled child handle bullying and bullies? ”

Why Friends Disappear When Crisis Turns Chronic, by Marie Hartwell-Walker, Ed.D., Psych Central, May 16 2016.

“It’s a common experience: Something goes wrong in a family. A child is diagnosed with a chronic illness or a disability. Maybe he or she gets into serious trouble. You’d think friends would draw closer at times like those. Many drift away instead. ”

Teens with Intellectual Disability Have it Harder, by Marie Hartwell-Walker, Ed.D., Psych Central, May 16 2016.

“While about 20 percent of American teenagers between the ages of 13 to 18 are affected by some type of mental disorder to an extent that they have difficulty functioning, teens with intellectual disability are more than twice as likely to develop a mental illness. Double! ”

Senate Passes National Family Caregiver Support Program, by My Child Without Limits, United Cerebral Palsy, Apr 8 2016.

“the Senate passed the Older Americans Act (OAA). This bill contains the eligibility fix for the national family caregiver support program that will now include older relative caregivers (aged 55 and over) of their adult children with disabilities (aged 18-59). ”

Autism—It's Different in Girls, by Maia Szalavitz, Scientific American, Mar 1 2016.

“One in 68 children in the U.S. is affected by autism—but new research suggests that current diagnostic methods overlook girls, meaning even more kids may be on the spectrum.  Behavioral and preliminary neuroimaging findings suggest autism manifests differently in girls. Notably, females with autism may be closer to typically developing males in their social abilities than typical girls or boys with autism.  Girls with autism may be harder to diagnose for several reasons, including criteria developed specifically around males and overlapping diagnoses such as obsessive-compulsive disorder or anorexia. ”

Mindfulness can improve living with a disability, by Yoon-Suk Hwang, The Conversation, Jan 10 2016.

“Mindfulness, a meditative practice focusing on attention and awareness training, has been shown to have positive effects on mental and physical wellbeing. A recent review of studies has also shown that mindfulness meditation helps people with intellectual disabilities and autism spectrum disorder reduce their mental and physical problems. ”

Grandparenting a Disabled Child, by Marie Hartwell-Walker, Ed.D., Psych Central, 2016.

“Family dynamics always are complicated. They become even more so following the birth of a child with disabilities. As all members of the family work to accept what has happened and to figure out how to manage, old patterns of dependency and responsibility reassert themselves. It is not at all uncommon for the parents of the child to look to the grandparents to lift the burden and make it better.  ”

Everything to Know for Family Caregivers, by Sherri Snelling, Money Geek, 2016.

“Millions of Americans coping with disabilities, illnesses, and chronic health conditions rely on family members, friends, and neighbors to get by. Caregiving is so much part of our national ethos, in fact, that an estimated 34 million adults have served as unpaid caregivers to someone age 50 or older in the previous 12 months, according to a recent study. ”

A Parent’s Guide To Protecting Kids with Intellectual Disabilities from Sexual Abuse, by Marie Hartwell-Walker, Ed.D., Psych Central, 2016.

“Depending on the study, it is estimated that from 60 to 90 percent of women with an intellectual disability will be sexually exploited or abused in the course of their lives, in contrast to 25 percent of the typical female population. Boys aren’t exempt. From 16 to 30 percent also will be sexually abused before they turn 18. As hard as it is to understand or admit, there are bad people in the world who see a person with intellectual disabilities as a sitting duck. Abusers tend to be equal opportunity opportunists. They want sex and see people with intellectual disabilities as unlikely to report the abuse, or, even if they do report, unlikely to be believed. ”

THE COST OF LOVE: CARING FOR ADULTS WITH INTELLECTUAL OR DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES, by CRAIG PHILLIPS, PBS, Nov 20 2015.

“The care of aging adults is a problem we all face, especially with more and more Americans living longer, but caring for adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities (I/DD) makes the aging process all the more challenging ”

Intellectual Disability and Higher Education, by Michael Gill, Ph.D. , Psychology Today, Oct 21 2015.

“Those involved in higher education can trace how “inclusion” is deployed on college campuses, and whether students are integrated into all aspects of campus. In addition, I welcome ideas about the ways in which higher education can actively challenge assumptions of intellect that persistently exclude those labeled with intellectual and developmental disabilities. ”

The Resiliency of Individuals With Intellectual Disabilities, by Carly Rodgers, M.S., Psychology Today, Feb 18 2014.

“Resilience is an individual’s ability to adapt and bounce back in the face of adversity and may be viewed as an individuals’ defense against stress. As humans, we all grow and continue to learn throughout our lives.  An individuals’ resilience can also change and evolve over time.  The resiliency of individuals with intellectual disabilities may be tested more frequently, more intensely, and for longer durations of time when compared to individuals who are not living with an intellectual disability. ”

Why and How to Be a Therapist for the Intellectually Disabled, by Marie Hartwell-Walker, Ed.D., PsychCentral, Mar 18 2013.

“For many, many years, people believed that people with intellectual disability (ID) could not have mental illness. Some early literature even suggests that people with ID don’t have feelings like the rest of us. Changes in mood and behavior were seen as part of the disability, not as symptoms of mental illness. In the early 1980s, Steven Reiss coined the term “diagnostic overshadowing” to describe this phenomenon. He noted that intellectual disability was such an obvious and important characteristic that it overshadowed professionals’ perceptions to the point that they couldn’t see their client’s signs of emotional distress and illness. Those early prejudices survive in the lack of training for therapists and the lack of availability of therapeutic services today. ”

What's Wrong With Timmy?, by Maria Shriver, 2001.

Special Kids Need Special Parents, by Judith Lavin, 2001.