Community Adjustment of Young Adults with Mental Retardation: A Developmental Perspective

The community adjustment of young adults with mental retardation remains a crucial issue for all human service providers. No longer does adjustment imply simply the physical integration of persons with disabilities into community settings. Rather, it refers to the adjustment and integration of the whole person into community life. Whether one describes community adjustment as a process, an outcome, a philosophy, or a multidimensional concept (Bachrach, 1981), community adjustment has become synonymous with the term quality-of-life, a quality that depends in large part on one’s happiness and success in socially sanctioned, age-appropriate tasks