mental handicap

noun

1. a general or specific intellectual disability, resulting directly or indirectly from injury to the brain or from abnormal neurological development

Usage

Nowadays both mental handicap and mentally handicapped are considered to have inappropriate and negative connotations. The phrases learning difficulties and a person with learning difficulties are used instead

Derived Forms

• mentally handicapped, adjective

Example Sentences

Even if the motive for cutting funds and forcing parents to reimburse the agency isn't motivated by such an animus, a culture that can justify doing such things for a child with a mental handicap -- but not one with a physical handicap -- is a culture that has some deeply problematic views about mental health issues.

From Salon

But rather than welcoming a proposal to review some of these disability designations, the president’s opponents have seized the opportunity to grandstand on the issue, portraying the proposal as a cruel effort to punish everyone with a physical or mental handicap.

From Washington Post

“Whether they have a physical handicap or an emotional handicap or a mental handicap, when you’re around a horse,” Akbar says, “the energy is so powerful that it tunes the body up. That’s why there are so many therapeutic riding programs, because they do see physical changes in people who are around horses.”

From New York Times

He was practically hyperventilating, so I slowed him down and got him to tell me all about how he’s been dealing with what he considered a mental handicap he was hiding from the world.

From New York Times

Even Rosemary, third of the nine, managed at age 20 to get through her social debut despite a mental handicap that left her ever further behind her siblings.

From New York Times