Psychiatric symptoms in children with intellectual disability (original) (raw)

Abstract

In a sample of almost 6000 8-year-old children, we found that 1.5% attended special schools for the educationally subnormal, or training schools. Psychiatric symptoms were studied by means of three screening instruments: the Rutter Parent Questionnaire (RA2) for the parents, the Rutter Teacher Questionnaire (RB2) for the teachers, and the Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI) for the children. The prevalence rate of children identified as possibly suffering from a psychiatric disturbance was 32.2% according to the RA2. The corresponding prevalence rate for the RB2 was 34.2%. According to the CDI 11.0% had depressive disturbance. All types of disturbances were more frequent among the intellectually disabled children as compared to the nondisabled children. The differences were statistically significant for emotional and mixed types of disturbance on the RA2, and for emotional and conduct types of disturbance on the RB2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Clinic of Child Psychiatry, University and University Hospital of Oulu, FIN-90220, Oulu, Finland
    S. L. Linna MD, PhD, I. Moilanen & H. Ebeling
  2. Department of Child Psychiatry, University of Turku, Turku, Finland
    J. Piha
  3. Department of Child Psychiatry, University of Kuopio, Kuopio, Finland
    K. Kumpulainen
  4. Department of Child Psychiatry, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland
    T. Tamminen
  5. Department of Child Psychiatry, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
    F. Almqvist

Authors

  1. S. L. Linna MD, PhD
  2. I. Moilanen
  3. H. Ebeling
  4. J. Piha
  5. K. Kumpulainen
  6. T. Tamminen
  7. F. Almqvist

Corresponding author

Correspondence toS. L. Linna MD, PhD.

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Linna, S.L., Moilanen, I., Ebeling, H. et al. Psychiatric symptoms in children with intellectual disability.European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 8 (Suppl 4), S77–S82 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00010704

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