176 Chapter 7 their problems. On the contrary. I want to be crystal clear: there can be no doubt that most (if not all) individuals with a mild intellectual disability classification have problems. Their problems are real, inflicting real hardship and suffering. Trouble adapting to society’s demands certainly makes the need for tailored support and care real. In no way do I deny or downplay this. I only wonder who benefits from the fact that real problems receive a normative label that is colloquially phrased as a natural kind (“you have a disability”). Second, this line of thinking does not come out of the left field, as other psychiatric diagnoses have been debated in a similar vein. The argument that it is illogical to state that a disorder causes symptoms, while the disorder is a description of those symptoms has been made for ADHD (te Meerman et al., 2022), autism (Baron-Cohen, 2008), depression (Fried, 2022), dyslexia (Elliot & Gibbs, 2008), personality disorders (Hopwood, 2024), post-traumatic stress disorder (McHugh & Treisman, 2007), schizophrenia (van Os, 2010) and substance use disorder (Lewis, 2018). Consequences of framing mild intellectual disability as a static cause of problems The fact that a mild intellectual disability is no more than a description of problems has both scientific and societal consequences. It obviates a large body of scientific research that explored how average levels of behavioral problems differ between groups of people with and without the diagnosis. There would be no mild intellectual disability if they had similar levels of behavioral problems. For example, concluding that people with a mild intellectual disability are, on average, more susceptible to peer pressure or delinquent behavior, can come as no surprise, because as part of their diagnosis, they were literally already compared to the norm group on such adaptive problems. Perhaps more important are societal consequences. Empirical research almost always shows rather small group-level differences (partly due to the group’s heterogeneity), but conclusions make their way to the public domain as universal statements like they are “a large risk group for developing addiction”, “more susceptible to peer pressure”, “often victim or perpetrator of criminal behavior”, “at increased risk for suicide” (Kennisplein Gehandicaptensector, 2024; Landelijk Kenniscentrum LVB, 2024). Given that both scientists and laypeople tend to believe group-level statements apply to most people (McManus et al., 2023), aforementioned statements can be stigmatizing to the people it concerns. The small increased probability of for example victimization in the mild intellectual disability group compared to that of a control group, cannot be generalized back to any individual having that increased probability (Fisher et al., 2018; Molenaar, 2004), who may thus falsely be labeled as being “at risk
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