Objective: The purpose of this study is to investigate socio-demographic information, diagnoses, comorbidity, and treatment information of patients who attended the Developmental Disorders outpatient clinic of Ege University Medicine Faculty.
Methods: Files of 742 patients who presented to the Developmental Disorders outpatient clinic between January 2011- January 2015 were reviewed. The patient information was analyzed using SPSS 22.0 program.
Results: The mean age of the children was 9.66 years (SD:4.11). 71.3% of them are boys (n:529) and 28.7% are girls (n:213). The most common diagnoses were 39.1% mild mental retardation (n:290), 15.5% moderate mental retardation (n:115), 4.7% severe mental retardation (n:35), 28.6% autism spectrum disorder (ASD) [15.1% autistic disorder (n:112), 12.4% pervasive development disorder not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) (n:92), 1.1% Asperger Syndrome (AS) (n: 8)], 2.8% developmental delay (n:21) and 2.7% learning disabilities (n:20). Other diagnoses were border intelligence and speech disorders. The most frequent comorbid psychiatric disease was identified as ADHD in the MR group; in the mild MR group 41% (n:119), in the moderate MR group 33% (n:38) and in the severe MR group ADHD was 11.4% (n:4). In the MR group, autism spectrum disorder prevalence was found to increase with the severity of the disease. ASD comorbidity in the group of mild mental retardation was 3.4% (n:10), in the group of moderate mental retardation 6.1% (n:7) and in thegroup of severe mental retardation 17.1% (n:6). ADHD was also found the most common comorbid psychiatric disorder in the ASD group; 17.45% (n:37). The rate of medication use was 66.2%. Single psychotropic drug usage was found in 47.1%, combination therapy was found in 19.2% of patients. The rate of using single antipsychotics was 27.9%. The rate of other psychotropic drugs added to antipsychotic treatment was 17.1%. Note that 33.8% of patients did not receive any pharmacological treatment. It was found that 90.7% of the patients attended at least one educational institution. While the rate of attending special education was 40.8%, that of attending both special education and formal education was 15.9%. It was observed that the rates of attending only formal education and vocational school were 20.3% and 1.6%, respectively. The rate of attending an education center for autistic children was found to be 7% in the ASD group.
Conclusion: We found high comorbidity and treatment utilization rate, and the reason is thought to be that it represents a clinical sample. Behaviors associated with disruptive behavior disorders are more common in the group with mild mental retardation, while more behavioral problems associated with autism are observed in the group with more severe mental retardation. Approximately one fifth of the patients need to take multiple drug combination. The recognition of the clinical and demographic characteristics of children with MR and ASD, which are the most common groups of patients presenting to child psychiatry clinics, is thought to be helpful for our clinical practice.