I have been looking into the topic of disabilities terminology recently, because the Journal of Mental Health, which I help with, is considering a special issue focussing on the topic of stigma. People regularly attempt to avoid stigmatisation by altering their vocabulary. Unfortunately however, it is the condition not the terminology which is being stigmatised – people who laugh at dwarves will just say “vertically challenged” while making little quotation marks with their hands, and then carry on sniggering. Mental retardation and mental handicap have now joined idiot, imbecile, moron, etc. as once‐useful terms that have acquired such pejorative connotations that we have been forced to drop them. The compilers of this dictionary have tried to keep up, but, while the stigma remains, they are bound to have to keep on producing new editions.
A developmental disability can be defined as a chronic condition in which non‐progressive brain damage or congenital abnormality has led to an impairment or limitation of one or more of the mental or bodily functions. Such impairments first manifest themselves in infancy or early childhood, but the effects are likely to be lifelong. Anyone with a developmental disability is more likely to need continuing care through life, and is less likely to be economically self‐sufficient than most other people. Developmental disabilities are therefore of considerable interest to members of the caring professions – nursing, teaching, social work, etc. As they tend not to be “curable” they are of less interest to members of the healing professions. Even among psychiatrists, those that can be persuaded to take any interest in developmental disability form a limited minority. The Human Genome project has increased interest in the topic among genetic scientists.
Developmental disability has, of course, a considerable reference literature. Pride of place, I suppose, should go to the five‐volume Encyclopedia of Disability (Albrecht, 2006). My own library uses the Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities (Turkington and Harris, 2006) while a trip to King's College education library dredged up a three‐volume Encyclopedia of Special Education (Reynolds and Fletcher‐Janzen, 2007) and the Praeger Handbook of Special Education (Bursztyn, 2007). All of these have glossaries or explanations of the relevant terminology, but I did also come across the Early Interventions Dictionary (Coleman, 1999) – somewhat dated already, but still useful, and a small but handy Learning Disabilities: Medical Dictionary, Bibliography and Research Guide to Internet References (Parker and Parker, 2004). King's College medical library has a copy of Stedman's Orthopaedic and Rehabilitation Words (Stedman, 2009) which is, of course, a sub‐set of the main Stedman's medical dictionary database. A library which holds a reasonable selection of these, or similar, titles may feel that they are adequately stocked with explanations of disabilities terminology. They should also note that major dictionaries of medicine, education or social work are likely to cover the majority of terms defined here: the topic falls between these three major disciplines. It may be useful to have terms from all three together in one handy resource however.
In spite of this considerable competition, this dictionary has obviously been in sufficient demand to warrant a third edition. It consists of, by my calculation, rather over 4,000 entries giving one‐paragraph definitions of relevant terms from a wide variety of relevant disciplines. The emphasis is primarily on the currently accepted terminology, usually referenced from older terms. This, of course, creates problems when terms that are now regarded as pejorative are fossilized in institutional terminology. Thus, this dictionary uses the term “Intellectual Disability” not “retardation” but has to have an entry for the Mental Retardation Facilities … Construction Act 1963. I noted, with considerable amusement, that one of the items recommended for further reading in the three‐page bibliography at the back of the book was Fink and Kraynak's excellent Bipolar Disorder for Dummies. The term “dummy” does not even warrant a reference in the dictionary, and I am sure that the editors would have thoroughly disapproved of it if they had thought about it for a single moment.
The definitions are clear and precise. Those that I sampled are accurate and up‐to‐date, to the best of my knowledge. They inevitably have to use specialised technical terms, but I only came across two very minor occasions when I could not find a definition of a technical word used, either in the entry itself or somewhere in the book. By and large therefore, this dictionary is self‐sufficient – far better than most of the specialised dictionaries that come my way in this respect. The cross‐referencing is good, but not good enough to make up for one major fault which this dictionary shares with far too many others: the editors have not tried to put themselves in the place of an inquirer seeking quick reference information. If, for example, you wanted to find out in a hurry about the first part of the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act of 1981, would you look under E? Or would you look under C for “Chapter 1 of the Education Consolidation … ”? Choosing sought terms is a difficult but important part of compiling a reference book.
Mention of American federal legislation brings out the point that all the contributors to this book are American, and that all the legal, organizational and institutional terms defined are entirely American. This is a pity. A great deal of pioneering work on the care and protection of developmentally disabled persons came from various European countries. Obviously the target market for this book is the American student or trainee. Sales in other countries are likely to be small by comparison. Nevertheless, entries for relevant Swedish or Dutch legislation and institutions might have been useful, and might have done a little to broaden the horizons of the average American reader.
On the whole this little book can be warmly recommended as a compact source of reference information in a cross‐disciplinary field of continuing interest. College libraries etc catering for courses in education, nursing or social work will find it extremely useful. Medical libraries that do not already have adequate reference sources in this area may find it worth considering. Libraries in countries outside the USA will find it less useful in some respects, but still worth considering. Changes in acceptable terminology and new developments in genetics, etc have been so great that libraries holding previous editions of the book can be advised to discard them.
