Monday, September 7th, 2026, 6:00 am
Disabilities and All That (It’s Getting Worse)
Filed under: What evolution?
isabilities come in many forms (or shapes) and as far as I’m aware I have nothing that counts as a disability or even allergy (like many other people, there are limits to how much lactose I can tolerate and this is apparently hereditary, it’s rather benign).
To Rianne and I it seems like more people born in recent years (if not decades) there are some mental and/or physical impairment. We don’t attribute that to pollution (air, water, food/diet); some blame late pregnancies (a century ago women chose to bear children at a much younger age). Apparently this is a common sentiment and people I speak to can’t help but notice the same. There are also studies about it.
If you look for a high-profile study on growth in that regard (children with impairment), then you will find many despite the political incorrectness. About the general trend: “In this study, we investigated the evolving epidemiology of six developmental disabilities (epilepsy, hearing loss, intellectual disability, vision loss, autism spectrum disorder [ASD], and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder [ADHD]) among children and adolescents aged 0–19?years from 1990 to 2021, focusing on prevalence and burden. The average annual percentage change (AAPC) was calculated, and trends were disaggregated by age, sex, and the socio-demographic Index (SDI).”
A more recent study looked at “Childhood mental, behavioral, and developmental disorders (MBDD)” and found: “From 2016 through 2021, MBDD prevalence among children aged 3 to 17 years increased from 25.3% to 27.7%; increases were specific to anxiety, depression, learning disability, developmental delay, and speech or language disorder. Unmet health care needs increased annually by an average of approximately 5% among children with MBDDs. Each year from 2016 to 2021, approximately 60% of children with MBDDs received mental or developmental services in the past 12 months. Each year, a higher percentage of parents of children with MBDDs compared with children without MBDDs reported poor mental health (14.7% MBDD, 5.7% no MBDD) and economic stress (21.6% MBDD, 11.5% no MBDD).”
The EPO treats children with special needs as a high priority as we assume many EPO workers have children that are “imperfect”.
