Children with Disabilities in India: An Unfolded Story

Over the past four decades, Indian society has been more concerned with children's physical and mental disabilities as one of the main societal issues. Nonetheless, most individuals in this nation are still unable to distinguish between mental illness and special educational needs. Research in this field has advanced significantly in the social and medical sciences. It has been noted that awareness of the issue of physical and mental disability is increasing quickly. Such rapid growth in interest is involving more and more researchers doing studies on mental retardation which is in terms of producing a large accumulation of data on the general condition with which individuals with special educational needs are associated. The results show that there was a significant difference between the two groups with regard to class and type of school and shows that age at first recognized, among the psychosocial variables there is a statistically significant difference between the two groups in the domains of family burden. There is a difference between the two groups in other psychosocial variables like self-esteem, marital life, social support and social stigma but they are not statistically significant. Children with conditions like cerebral palsy or Down’s syndrome need to be assisted in feeding. Children with mental health issues cannot comprehend the messages. At the same time, Children with disabilities have a higher risk of conditions such as diabetes and hypertension which are high-risk factors for COVID-19 mortality. Therefore, study observes that children with disabilities need much more support than the rest of the population in the face of a pandemic. It can be concluded from the study that the parental psychosocial problems are found to be much severe during the outbreak of the corona virus pandemic.