Abandoned to their Fate
Abandoned to their Fate
The video is about the severely mentally retarded people, otherwise known as the ‘imbeciles,’ or the ‘idiots’. During the middle ages, there are some written documents about people with mental disability. They were either rejected by the community or were treated as entertainment by the public. The people with mental disability were locked inside the ‘idiot’ cage and were shown in the town center for public display. The most common case of people who are severely mentally retarded is their physical feature. In particular, their physical features were the source of entertainment because people back them wanted to see them for their odd faces. Fast forward to the Second World War, Adolf Hitler killed millions of civilians with physical and mental disability regardless of their age. Furthermore, they became test subjects for the Nazis’ scientific experiment. As the years went by, more and more institutions were established for providing care and studying the illness of individuals with physical and mental disabilities.
However, the disabling attitudes and stereotypes towards people with mental and physical disabilities still persist even in the 21st century. Some people would ‘call names’ on individuals with physical and mental disability. There are also cases where children are neglected by their own family; thus, contributing to the physical and mental disability. The children who are neglected by their parents become severely mentally retarded in which their motor, cognitive, and aesthetic skills failed to developed. The people with disability were bullied at school or, in some other cases, were disowned by their own family. The reasons that people have stereotypes towards individuals with physical and mentally disability is because they are completely unaware of the disability. They find it weird when they find something odd in the person; thus, contributing to the persistence of the stereotype and the disabling attitudes.
