Special pedagogy of people with intellectual disability and contemporary psychiatry in poland – mutual complementarity or lack of understanding?

Pol Merkur Lekarski. 2025;53(2):277-283. doi: 10.36740/Merkur202502118.

ABSTRACT

Intellectual disability is the subject of interest of psychiatry and special education. Both sciences in Poland adopt an inclusive model of care for people with disabilities. The path of each of them from a directive model to an inclusive model has been different. The aim of the study is to compare the attitude towards people with intellectual disabilities and the evolution of changes that have taken place in Polish special education and in Polish psychiatry in the last few decades. The comparison was carried out using the narrative method through a review of key publications on the understanding of the intellectual disability phenomenon by special education in Poland and by psychiatry. In 1989, Polish special education departed from dialectical materialism as a binding doctrine in the social sciences. A postmodern understanding of the phenomenon of disability, culminating in the formulation of a humanistic paradigm of special education consisting of four microparadigms, developed instead. Special education moved away from quantitative research in favor of qualitative research, negating the biomedical aspects of disability. Qualitative and conceptual research studies carried out in Poland have not entered the global circulation of scientific information and are known locally in Poland. Polish psychiatry has undergone a less revolutionary path of change than special education. The development of community psychiatry in Western Europe slowly began to be implemented in Poland. It has been implemented in recent years in the form of mental health centers. Since the beginning of the political transformation, Polish psychiatry has been present in international journals in published English with the Impact Factor. Despite the postmodern, inclusive understanding of mental disorders, but in contrast to Polish special education, Polish psychiatry is based on quantitative research studies. Their results are published in international journals. Polish special pedagogy of people with intellectual disabilities, as well as Polish psychiatry, have undergone a significant paradigmatic reconstruction in the last few decades. Both sciences adopted an inclusive model of understanding intellectual disability. The different ways of development of the two sciences are reflected in publications and scientific research, as well as in certain terminological differences.

PMID:40322813 | DOI:10.36740/Merkur202502118