Childhood mental developmental disorders: causes and possibilities of prevention
Keywords:
mental development disorders, children, diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitationAbstract
Mental deficiency or mental retardation is not only a challenging ordeal for a child and their family, but also a problem for any country's health care system. The lack of common terminology and unified diagnostic approaches does not allow us to determine the real extent of the problem, but it is estimated that mental retardation is observed in about 1–3% of the world's population and prevails in low and middle income countries. Mental retardation can manifest in children of different ages; it can have different degrees of severity and different potential for correction efficiency, which makes timely diagnosis an important but also a challenging task. Approaches to identifying mental development disorders vary depending on the age of the child.The aim is to familiarize a wide audience of doctors with the principles of diagnosis, possible medical intervention and rehabilitation of children with mental disorders.
The following main issues are discussed: common causes of impaired mental development; the influence of malnutrition on the development of mental retardation; diagnosis of mental development disorders in children of different ages; important elements of an objective examination in identifying impaired mental development; intelligence assessment with the IQ coefficient calculation; opportunities for prevention and correction of mental development disorders in children. Mental development retardation should be in the spotlight of attention of doctors of various specialties, taking into account the wide range of causes leading to it. General practitioners have a special role in issues of timely diagnosis of mental disorders, identification of possible causes, and creation of a survey plan. The prevention of forms of mental deficiency associated with malnutrition, insufficient parental attention to the upbringing of the child, and the influence of various environmental factors also depend on them. In many cases, mental retardation and general developmental disorders are easier to prevent than to treat.
No conflict of interest were declared by the authors.
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