Promoting Health and Well-being in Developmental Disability Cases

This essay explores the vital connection between lifestyle choices and the health outcomes of individuals with developmental disabilities. It emphasizes the importance of healthy lifestyle choices, including nutritious diets, safe environments, regular physical activity, and the avoidance of harmful substances like alcohol and drugs. The essay also highlights health promotion strategies such as regular medical and dental examinations, promoting good hygiene practices, and fostering effective communication about medical needs. The author stresses the role of special education teachers in supporting individuals by providing information about healthy lifestyles. It also covers the importance of regular medical examinations, and hygiene skills. The essay references several studies to support the claims, and concludes that a holistic approach to health management is essential for improving the quality of life for those with developmental disabilities.

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Running Head: Developmental Disability
Developmental Disability
Institution
Lecturer
Student
Course
Date

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Developmental Disability
Lifestyle
The way people lead their lives on a daily basis starting from what they eat and what they love
doing during free time among affects the outcome of their health conditions. Almost all people
including even those with development disabilities actively make decisions that influence the
health and their safety as well. According to (Farhud, 2015), WHO outlines that individuals’
healthy living is directly correlated to their choice of a lifestyle.
As a special education teacher informing people about what they are supposed to do, supporting
individuals by providing them with information about what type of lifestyle is appropriate for
them is essential. It involves teaching the healthy choices in their lifestyles. Studies have stressed
on relations between active lifestyle with happiness (Farhud, Malmir, & Khanahmadi, 2015).
Leading a healthy lifestyle is a very important factor in managing people with development
disabilities. It can create avenues for improvement in general health outcomes of the patients and
protects them from unexpected attacks of other dangerous diseases.
Specifically, helping and encouraging these kind of individuals to maintain a safe and clean
environment to enhance acceptable hygiene levels, keeping them regularly active through
physical activities, choosing a balanced diet full of nutritious foods, eradicating smoking, alcohol
and the use of drugs; will aid them to lead a fully health life.
The choice of an appropriate lifestyle enables them to have stronger health conditions and lower
the risks for such conditions as obesity, high cholesterol levels, mental problem, depression,
heart disease, and other related injuries among others.
The lower risks of the above conditions are a clear indicator that, the individuals with
development disabilities will have reduced probability of being hospitalized as a result of
complications that arise from a poor lifestyle.

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Developmental Disability
The choice of nutritious food is the best way of staying healthy for the people with development
disabilities. Health eating lowers risks of obesity and other lifestyle diseases. The healthy eating
routine should consist of at least five fruit servings in a day, choosing foods that are low in fats,
avoid salt, as well as junk foods such as fried chicken and cakes (Mozaffarian, et al 2011).
Furthermore, the choice of safe and hygienic environment is also important. An individual with
development disabilities ought to have an organized hygienic schedule. And this involves regular
washing of their clothes, and proper feeding habits, clean dental exercises and appropriate
toileting habits among others.
There should be no use of alcohol and other drug substances for the people with development
disabilities. Alcohol, smoking and intake of other dug substances are detrimental to anyone.
They can cause addiction which in turn results in serious chronic diseases such as cancer and
many more. If any individual is detected to have addiction of any drug substance, all efforts
should be made to ensure they stop using it.
Regular exercise is also important, such that it keeps the persons healthy, strong and generally
active in every aspect of their social lives. These activities could be in form of sit ups on the bed,
propelling a wheelchair or running uphill to enhance the physicality of the body.
Health Promotion
According to (Sigafoos, Arthur, & O'Reilly, 2003) , medical problems have been the main cause
of the challenging behaviour among the people with development disabilities. This means that,
enhancing the health wellbeing of the individuals with these traits helps them live comfortably.
The promotion of health involves a variety of activities, which includes regular medical
examinations including dental examinations among others; effective measures to enhance the
hygiene awareness, promotion of health lifestyles and many more.

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Developmental Disability
Regular medical examinations are a necessity for every person, and more so to people with
development disabilities through appropriate care. The medical examinations involve carrying
regular tests on the prevailing health conditions of the affected persons. It should include dental
examinations to determine the health state of the patient’s teeth and even mental diagnosis to
determine their mental state (Lunsky & Raina, 2010).
In addition, health examinations should be carried out to establish any underlying medical
condition that may prove detrimental to the health of the person with the development
disabilities. Regular medical examinations are appropriate measure of care for them, because
most of the times these group of people have no capacity to look after themselves.
The other important factor in health promotion of the individuals with development disabilities
is the hygiene skills. As discussed in the first section, roper hygiene is an important part of the
healthy lifestyle. Therefore, setting up mechanisms on how to properly teach and develop the
culture of good hygiene is a crucial step for the people with development disabilities.
In addition, lifestyles matter, and the more the patient gets imparted with appropriate lifestyle
practices such as regular exercises and eradication of alcohol and other drugs intakes; the more
the improvement of their general health conditions is evident. The control of excessive use of
technology may also help in reduction of depression cases (Thomee, Harenstam, & Hagberg,
2011). Therefore, it is reasonable for efforts to be put in place in promoting healthy lifestyles for
healthier living of the affected people (Ziglio, Currie, & Rasmussen, 2004).
It is also important to develop a well established way of communicating. For instance,
appropriate mechanisms should be put in place to enable the patients communicate their medical
needs, and ensure that their needs are appropriately addressed.

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Developmental Disability
References
Farhud, D. D. (2015). Impact of Lifestyle on Health. Iranian Journal of Public Health , 1442–
1444.
Farhud, D. D., Malmir, M., & Khanahmadi, M. (2015). Happiness as a healthy life style. Iranian
Academy of Medical Science. (In press) .
Lunsky, Y., & Raina, P. (2010). A comparison study of adults with intellectual disability and
psychiatric disorder with and without forensic involvement. Research in Developmental
Disabilities , 218-223.
Mozaffarian, D., Hao, T., Rimm, E., Willett, W., & Hu, F. (2011). Changes in diet and life style
and long term weight gain in women & men. N Eng Med J , 2392–2404.
Sigafoos, J., Arthur, M., & O'Reilly, M. (2003). Part 3, Chapter 5: Health and Medical
Screening. In Challenging Behavior and Development Disability (pp. 77-93).
Thomee, S., Harenstam, A., & Hagberg, M. (2011). Mobile phone use and stress, sleep
disturbances, and symptom of depression among young adults. BMC Public Health , 66–
77.
Ziglio, E., Currie, C., & Rasmussen, V. (2004). The WHO cross-national study of health
behavior in school aged children from 35 countries: findings from 2001–2002. J School
Health , 204– 206.