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Developmental Disabilities are severe and long-term problems. These disabilities can range from mental disability to physical disability or both. 

Physical disabilities include: blindness, hearing loss, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, etc. 

Mental disabilities include: anxiety disorders, depressive disorder, personality disorders, etc.

Developmental disabilities can also present both physical and mental disabilities, such as, down syndrome (U.S. National Library, 2021)

  • Approximately 15% of children age 3-17, or 1 in 6 children, in the U.S. has some type of developmental disability
  • Many children and adults have more
    than one type of intellectual or developmental disability.
    Each likely to result in a variety of challenges requiring different types of care and services
  • Recent estimates show there are approximately 4.92 million individuals in the U.S. living with an intellectual disability, which is about 17% of the U.S. population
  • Children from families with low income have higher prevalence of intellectual/developmental disabilities
  • People with intellectual and developmental disabilities have been shown to have poorer health and poorer access to health care
  • Males have been shown to have twice the prevalence of any developmental disability than females
  • It is estimated that 30-35% of all
    people with intellectual or developmental disabilities also have a psychiatric disorder (statistics, 2016)

Resources

Statistics. The Achievable Foundation. (2016, March 21). Retrieved February 14, 2022, from https://achievable.org/developmental-disabilities/statistics/

U.S. National Library of Medicine. (2021, November 9). Developmental disabilities. MedlinePlus. Retrieved February 14, 2022, from https://medlineplus.gov/developmentaldisabilities.html