Fears in mental retardation: Part two—Prevalence of fears reported by mentally retarded and non-mentally retarded adults

Abstract

The responses of mentally retarded (MR) and non-mentally retarded (NMR) adults matched for parental occupational levels to a modified version of the Fear Survey Schedule (FSS-III) allowing only three response categories were compared. The fear items were subdivided into five dimensional categories of fear types: Social Rejection (SR), Agoraphobia (Ag), Tissue Damage (TD), Sex and Aggression (SA) and Animal (An). There was also a small group of Miscellaneous fears (Misc). Independent analyses of the prevalence and intensity of responses on individual items showed that both measures had contributed to the overall higher fear level in the MR group. The MR group showed a greater tendency to express high fear than the NMR group, while the NMR group was characterized on the SR and SA fear types by more frequent expression of moderate degrees of fear than the MR group. Within the NMR group, response distributions on all fear types were J-shaped and on individual items were almost entirely J-shaped. By contrast, for the MR group, U-shaped distributions, in which the frequency of high fear responses exceeded that of moderate ones, were found for the TD, SA and An fear types; distributions on about 25 per cent of the individual fears were also U-shaped. The results are discussed with reference to some large scale studies of the prevalence of fears and phobias in the general population.