Group Home Patient with Mental Retardation

I had a lady come in with mental retardation, vision problems, and a seizure disorder. She was very sweet but had limited speech and language so evaluation procedures were limited. No responses were observed when presented with pure tones in sound field. However, a speech awareness threshold was found within normal limits with speech stimuli including "hi", "how are you?", "are you ready?", and "come on, let's go". Also, otoacoustic emissions were present in all frequencies except for one that was very low freq. Since we see many patients from the group home with mental retardation, I found an article discussing general information for a physician when dealing with this type of patient. The article includes characteristics, types, diagnoses, and development. I especially found the evaluation and referrals section beneficial to our profession since this is a specialized group to assess. The importance of talking to the parent or caregiver was discussed. In my experience, the caregiver's information and opinions have been essential to testing the individual. Here is the article:

Daily, D., Ardinger, H.H., & Holmes, G.E. (2000). Identification and Evaluation of Mental Retardation. American Family Physician.

http://www.aafp.org/afp/20000215/1059.html