Key+Findings

Key Findings Within Learning Disabilities

 By the mid-nineteenth century, the prevailing belief was that the basis of all illness, especially mental illness, was disordered physiology or brain chemistry. Due to the certainty that all disorders had a natural base, categorizing “mental” disorders just as organic diseases had been classified made sense. (Hergenhaun, 2009) All of this can closely relate to how learning disabilities are perceived, even till this day. Before the major discoveries, such as Franz Joseph Gall’s identity of the 27-different brain regions (LD, 2012); it was believed that what are now commonly referred to as LDs were once considered mental insanities. It was breakthroughs such as these that lead to even greater discoveries for the field of learning disabilities. Eventually, the American Psychiatric Association created the handbook that is most often used in diagnosing mental disorders in the United States and other countries. This particular handbook would be composed of particular intelligence based tests to measure for psychological disorders. Among the 2000 edition, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders- fourth book- ‘text revision’, or DSM-IV-TR, common LD disorders such as reading, mathematics, disorder of written expressions, and LD not otherwise specified (NOS) could be identified (Comer, 2011).

 It is estimated that there are currently 2.4 million students that are diagnosed with learning disabilities and receive special education for them (NCLD, 2012). Intellectual health professionals emphasize that because no one knows for sure what might cause a learning disability, it does not help when the parents look to the past in search of possible causes. There proceeds to be too many explanations to pin-point the exact cause of the disability without enough certainty. However, new evidence supports that most learning disabilities origin is not from a solitary, precise area of the brain, but from complexity in gathering together information from different brain regions. It is clear that the causes of learning disabilities are an ambiguous field for research. Each condition is best understood by bearing in mind related factors rather than the specific cause and effect relationships. It is critical to explore the core cause of learning disabilities in order to prevent them (LD Report, 2007).