Sociodemographic characteristics and psychiatric diagnoses of child and adolescents referred to special education

Objective: Many children and adolescents with intellectual and physically disabilities apply to “the health board for the disabled” in hospitals to get their social and educational rights. The aim of this study was to evaluate the sociodemographic characteristics, complaints, psychiatric diagnoses of child and adolescents, who had been referred for special education by the child and adolescent psychiatry outpatient clinics.

Methods: We retrospectively reviewed records of 104 children and adolescents aged 0-17 years, who applied to Child and Adolescent Psychiatry outpatient clinic at Kahramanmaras between January 2009 and 2012. In all cases, age, gender, complaints, drug use, comorbid physical and psychiatric disorder, intelligence level, and psychiatric diagnosis according to DSM-IV-TR classification were evaluated.

Results: Of the cases, 45.2% (47) were female and 54.8% (57) were male. The mean age was 5.23±4.1. Most of the cases (63.5%, n=69) were in the range of 0-6 years of age. The most common complaints were determined as ‘speech delay’, ‘delay than their peers’, ‘perception disability’ in the range of 0- 6 years of age, ‘distractibility’, ‘learning disability’ and ‘academic failure’ in the range of 7-17 years of age. The most common psychiatric diagnoses were mild (51.4%) and moderate (26.4%) cognitive developmental delay, pervasive developmental disorders (13.8%) in the range of 0- 6 years of age, mild (62.5%) and moderate (12.5%) mental retardation, pervasive developmental disorders (12.5%) in the range of 7-17 years of age. 39.6% (41) of the cases were comorbid physical disorder and 49.5% (51) of the cases were comorbid psychiatric disorder. %18.3 of the cases were using psychiatric drugs.

Conclusion: In our study, the most common psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents that require special education had been identified as mental retardation and pervasive developmental disorder. Moreover, rate of comorbid physical and psychiatric disorders in the children were found to be high. Very few studies have yet been published in this field. So further investigation in this field will contribute the statistical data of mental disabilities contribute in our country.