What is Multiple disabilities? Explained

Multiple disabilities are briefly discussed in this article, including their definition, causes, types, and interventions. At the end of this post the reader will learn about:

About Multiple Disabilities
Characteristics of children with Multiple disabilities
Incidence and prevalence

Introduction
Multiple Disabilities:
Characteristics of Children with Multiple Disabilities:
Causes and Types of multiple Disabilities
Types of Multiple Disabilities:
Intervention:

Introduction

Teachers have particular difficulties when working with children who have severe and numerous disabilities. These kids require more individualised care and support than a typical kid. With the National Trust Act's recognition of this condition, the country is placing more emphasis and priority on the assistance for these kids (1999). When deciding on interventions and the plans and methods for their execution, care providers must have a solid understanding of children with various disabilities.

Multiple Disabilities

Multiple disabilities have been defined as the combination of more than one disability in a person. It includes children who have two or more of the following condition:

Varying degrees of mental retardation
Cerebral palsy
Autism
Blindness or low vision
Deafness or hearing loss
Physical disability as polio, paralysis, delayed motor development
Neurological impairment
Communication disorder

From child to child, the combination of disabilities and their severity can differ. The illness can manifest at any age, from infancy through adolescence. Children may already have one disabling ailment, but they also run the risk of developing a second or third one in the years to come. A number of disabilities may also interact over time and cause developmental delays, subsequent complications, physical or mental problems such contractures or deformities, and psychiatric disorders. Multiple disabilities are a group of two or more impairments that collectively affect a child's ability to communicate, move about, and carry out daily activities. Every child with MD is unique, just like every other child. However, there are some characteristics that these groups of kids share.

It affects the all-round development of the child
Communication with the world around is most severely affected
Opportunities to interact with the environment becomes very limited
Ability to move around in the environment is restricted
Need regular help in simple day-to-day activities such as wearing a shirt, opening a door, finding a chair to sit down and so on.
A highly structured educational / rehabilitation programme helps in their training

Characteristics of Children with Multiple Disabilities:

The following traits can be seen in kids with numerous disabilities:

Vision Issues: As youngsters become older, some of them seem to always close their eyes to gaze attentively at anything, or continually staring at their moving fingers or paper, trip over objects while walking, and constantly complain of too much light. Additionally, their eyes may not appear to be "regular" eyes.
Hearing Issues: Children who have hearing issues could only react to specific noises. To develop speech, it could require a long period and frequent practise. They frequently merely repeat what they hear. They may also learn to adapt to their familiar environment by "guessing" the conversations that are taking place, but they may actually experience significant problems when they are in an unfamiliar setting with strangers. Children who are deaf can occasionally struggle to balance themselves or walk correctly.
Learning Issues: The youngsters learn very slowly as a result of the combination of two or more disabilities. Unless extra effort is made to ensure the child feels comfortable in exploring his surroundings, learning frequently becomes monotonous and useless. Children with multiple disabilities also have relatively few imaginative play ideas for toys or objects nearby.
Communication: Of all the areas, communication is arguably the one that has the greatest impact on kids with multiple disabilities. The children are unable to see, hear, or follow the various interactions between their brother and sister, greetings of seniors, waiting in line to buy tickets, or distributing water bottles around a dining table.
Posture and Mobility: Our senses of sight, hearing, and bodily motions enable us to move about without running into things, remember how to get to locations, and even hold and examine objects with our hands. The youngster sometimes struggles to control his own body motions due to the presence of Cerebral Palsy, locomotor problems, and balance issues, making it exceedingly challenging for him to use his body to travel from one area to another.
Odd Behaviors: The majority of kids with multiple disabilities display odd behaviours known as "self-stimulating" behaviours. Some of them include jerky movements of the body, head shakes, finger movements in front of the eyes, smacking or slapping of the ears, swinging in one spot, and so forth. Most of the time, kids engage in this activity because they are bored. It can be crucial for them to keep doing it occasionally since it gives them a method to learn something new about the world around them. These kids occasionally exhibit irregular sleeping patterns.
Medical Conditions: The majority of children with multiple disabilities also experience various health issues, such as epilepsy, recurrent eye and ear infections, respiratory problems, muscular degeneration, many operations, and so forth. Such health issues result in frequent hospital stays, which again deprives the youngster of exposure to and learning from the environment.
Prevalence: There are very few students who have severe multiple impairments. The percentage of people with severe and multiple disabilities ranges from 0.1 to 1% of all people of school age and from 2 to 4% of all students. In a general education classroom, it is unlikely that more than one kid with severe multiple disabilities would be enrolled at any given moment.

Causes and Types of multiple Disabilities:

The various variables that contribute to severe and numerous disability fall into the following categories:

Prenatal reasons include chromosomal abnormalities, viral infections, alcohol and drug use while pregnant, maternal starvation, and physical harm to the mother.
Perinatal causes: These include infections developed during childbirth, a shortage of oxygen to the baby's brain at birth, and physical harm to the baby's brain at birth.
Postnatal causes: These include meningitis and encephalitis in children, traumatic brain injuries brought on by accidents or abuse, lead poisoning, drug reactions, and exposure to chemicals or other environmental factors.

The degree and complexity of the condition, like other disabilities, are influenced by the genetic abnormalities, the degree of brain damage, and the environment in which the child is reared.

Types of Multiple Disabilities:

Multiple disabilities are a mixture of different impairments that children with multiple disabilities may have, including speech, physical mobility, learning, mental retardation, vision, hearing, brain injury, and maybe other impairments. They may also have sensory losses, behavioural issues, and/or social issues in addition to having numerous disabilities. For these students, there are numerous educational repercussions.

Cerebral Palsy (CP):

The word "cerebral" refers to the brain. A movement issue is referred to as palsy. CP refers to a collection of neuromuscular conditions that are nonprogressive and range in severity. The brain is damaged with CP, particularly the area of the brain responsible for controlling motor activities. However, the brain's other regions could also be impacted. In these situations, the affected person has many disabilities. Each person experiences injury differently, in terms of severity. Fine motor skills, such as writing or using scissors, may be challenging for people with mild disabilities. Poor movement of the neck, the trunk, and all four limbs might be a sign of severe impairment. The youngster might even have trouble swallowing.

Autism:

Social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication, and repetitive behaviours or interests are all difficulties in children with ASD. Additionally, they frequently react strangely to sensory stimuli like specific sounds or the appearance of items. These symptoms range in severity from mild to severe. Each youngster will exhibit them in a unique way. For instance, a child may learn to read with little difficulty but have very poor social skills. Each child will exhibit unique communication, social, and behavioural patterns that are consistent with the ASD diagnosis as a whole.

Mental Retardation:

Intellectual disability is characterised by both limitations in daily functioning, such as communication, self-care, getting along in social situations, and participating in school activities, as well as by a significantly below-average score on a test of mental ability or intelligence. The terms cognitive disability and mental retardation are sometimes used to describe intellectual disability. Though they can and do learn new skills, children with intellectual disabilities grow more slowly than kids with ordinary intelligence and adaptive abilities. From mild to profound, there are distinct levels of intellectual disability. The degree of intellectual disability that a person has might be determined by their IQ or by the kind and quantity of support they require.

Locomotor Disability:

A condition that significantly limits a person's ability to move their limbs, such as cerebral palsy, is referred to as locomotor disability.

Spinal cord injuries:

These are typically caused by a severe impact to the spine. While some spinal cord injuries can recover entirely, others result in paralysis.Polio is a highly infectious disease that is brought on by polioviruses. It can result in paralysis and harm the nerve system.

Muscular dystrophy

Muscular dystrophy is a set of genetic disorders that affects the muscles and weakens and degenerates them over time.

Contractures

Contractures are the tightening of muscles and joints over time.

Club Foot (talipes equinovarus)

There are 3 components of deformity namely equinus, hindfoot varus and forefoot adductus. Club foot is more common in boys.

Hearing Impairment:

"Hearing impairment" is defined as a loss of 60 dB or more in the better ear in the range of frequencies used for conversation.

Deafness:

"Hearing impairment" is defined as a loss of 60 dB or more in the better ear in the range of frequencies used for conversation.

Different types of Hearing loss

Permanent hearing loss caused by cochlea or auditory nerve damage is referred to as sensorineural hearing loss. Hearing aids or cochlear implants are frequently used as treatments for sensorineural hearing loss.
Conductive hearing loss is brought on by issues with the middle or outer ear .The inner ear does not receive the sound in an effective manner. As a result, all sounds are weakened or muted. Regardless of the background noise, such people typically speak softly. Usually, amplification or medical intervention can counteract it. In cases of conductive hearing loss, surgery may be able to restore hearing.
Mixed hearing loss is a hearing loss that is the result of both conductive and sensorineural hearing loss.
Central Auditory Disorder: Central hearing loss results from illness, deformity, or injury to the brain's neural networks and hearing centres. Although the child can hear, he has trouble understanding what he hears. This kind of hearing loss may be present in certain children who are labelled as slow learners or learning challenged.

Visual Impairment:

Blindness is defined as having none of the following conditions: total blindness, visual acuity that is less than 6/60 or 20/200 (Snellen) in the better eye even with corrective glasses, or a field of vision that is restricted to an angle of 20 degrees or more. The visual acuity and field of vision have both been taken into account when determining if a person is blind.
Low Vision: According to the Persons with Disabilities Act of 1995, low vision is a type of disability and is defined as follows:

“Person with low vision” means a person with impairment of visual functioning even after treatment or standard refractive correction but who uses or is potentially capable of using vision for the planning or execution of a task with appropriate assistive device”

These illnesses can result in modest vision loss all the way up to total blindness. It may appear that youngsters with visual impairment and brain injury utilise their eyesight in different ways during the course of the day. These kids also struggle with perceptual responses such depth perception, memory of visual information, looking for objects they perceive, and recognising significant visual information. (Rawal and Punani)

Mental Illness:

According to studies, 2% of children and adolescents receive treatment for mental illness and psychosocial issues (Cohen, Cohen, & Brook, 1993). The most typical forms of mental illness that young people experience are

Anxiety Disorders: Children with worry disorders exhibit physical symptoms of anxiety (nervousness), such as a racing heartbeat and sweating, as well as feelings of fear and dread in response to certain things or circumstances. The most frequent types of anxiety disorders identified in kids are separation anxiety disorder, overanxious disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder.
Disruptive behaviour disorder : Children with these disorders frequently disobey rules and cause trouble in regulated settings, including school. Conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are common forms encountered in youngsters (ADHD).
Eating disorders are characterised by strong feelings and attitudes around food and/or weight, as well as atypical actions. The two types of eating disorders that affect children are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.
Affective disorders, often known as mood disorders, are characterised by persistent melancholy and/or erratic mood changes. The most prevalent form in kids is major depressive disorder.
Children with pervasive developmental disorders, also known as autism spectrum disorders, exhibit irregularities and challenges in their verbal and nonverbal communication skills as well as their ability to build reciprocal social interactions.

Intervention

Early Identification and Intervention:

The requirement for intense early intervention is common in children with multiple impairments. Such children can benefit from parental and educational support in the development of communication skills, tactile abilities, and the conceptual framework for further learning.

Assistive Devices

Any tool that can assist a person with a disability in carrying out activities of daily living is referred to as an assistive device. These gadgets can directly allow people with impairments to engage in activities of daily living. People can use assistive technology on their own or with assistance from others.

Orthotics:

This includes giving a crippled individual splints and other equipment that enhances their function and appearance. An orthosis is a device that is added to the patient in order to improve the functionality of the body part to which it is fitted. Preventing and correcting any deformity brought on by the impairment is the primary purpose and goal of orthoses. As it restricts motion and weight bearing, it also relieves discomfort. As a result, weak, painful, or mending muscle-skeletal segments are immobilised and protected. It also results in an enhancement in the way that particular limb functions.

Prosthetics:

Prosthetics: Prosthetics are any artificial replacements for lost bodily parts. There are both internal and external types. Both upper and lower limbs can be replaced with external prostheses, which are further divided into endoskeletal limbs, conventional limbs, and temporary pylon prostheses. The goal of prosthetic rehabilitation is to get the most usage possible out of the remaining stump from the missing or amputated limb. When selecting the proper prosthetic, it's important to consider the level of amputation, the type of socket, the material of the socket, the type of joint to be utilised, such as a hip, knee, or elbow mechanism, as well as the ankle/foot or hand/terminal appliances.

Cosmetics:

Cosmetics are used to maintain, enhance, or grant physical appearance. It denotes the fabrication of artificial limbs that mirror real limbs in terms of prosthetics. A patient's mobility can be increased by using walking aids. When the upper limbs can sustain some of the body's weight, this is done. Walking aids include things like parallel bars, walking frames, crutches, and sticks, among others. The stability of the patient, the strength of the upper and lower limbs, the degree of coordination of movement of the upper and lower limbs, and the degree of relief from weight-bearing equipment that is necessary all play a role in the choice of the walking aid. Crutches, frames, sticks, and parallel bars are examples of different walking aids. Using walking assistance for rehabilitation takes time. After a protracted illness, the patient needs to rebuild his or her strength. This can be obtained by following a proper diet and an exercise regimen that is well-planned and progressive. Additionally, the patient needs to overcome their fear of falling.