Bruce L. Kiesling - Developmental Disabilities in the United States

Overall, I think Dr. Kiesling's talk was very important to learn about while starting OT school.  Sometimes people think that learning the history isn't important because we are moving forward. However, learning the history of our profession will help us to shape our beliefs and our own world views.  I was shocked to hear some of the word choices that were used to describe individuals with disabilities.  It was hard to hear and hard to imagine people using those words to actually describe others.  Knowing that there was propaganda saying phrases like we need to "breed out" these "feeble-minded" individuals because they are unlike "normal persons" was appalling.

One thing that really stood out to me during this speech was the amount of people that were involuntarily put into institutions for things like epilepsy, vision impairment and even an imperfect gait.  Because of this, these institutions were severely overcrowded and lead to a lot of mistreatment of the individuals staying there.  The story of the Kennedy's also really shocked me.  I cannot believe how long they kept that a secret and how horrible some families even were to their children with disabilities.

I am excited for the future and how we work with individuals with disabilities in the United States.  I like how our mentality has changed from, we need to breed out these individuals to we need to help them, and now more of the fact that they are human and they have rights and want to be just as independent as we are.  With more inclusion of disabilities in our everyday life, like a muppet who has autism, hopefully the world will also become more respectful.