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Mixed specific developmental disorders in children
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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A group of disorders characterized by the presence of specific speech development disorders, school skills, and motor functions in one person without a significant predominance of one of the defects required to establish a primary diagnosis. A common symptom for this category of disorders is their combination with some degree of cognitive impairment. This diagnostic section, poorly defined and not clearly defined in the ICD-10, is approaching the diagnostic category "delay in mental development" that has been widely used and continues to be used in domestic psychiatry, with the isolation of its dysontogenetic and encephalopathic forms.
ICD-10 code
F83 Mixed specific disorders of psychological development.
Epidemiology
Most often, domestic psychiatrists cite statistics among primary school students: 4.6-5.8% of children with mental retardation.
Causes and pathogenesis
In the genesis of these disorders the leading role is assigned to biological factors, including hereditary predisposition and structurally unstable tissue damage to brain structures as a result of exogenous organic influences with subsequent disruption of the formation of interanalytical bonds. Social factors, such as a lack of information related to a low family level, neglect, exacerbate the manifestations of a mixed developmental disorder. Pathogenesis has not been studied enough. It is suggested that in some cases the mechanism of delay of maturation and functional immaturity of the corresponding brain structures predominates, in others - the mechanism of loss of structural and functional elements providing a higher level of intellectual development prevails.
Symptoms
The clinical picture is polymorphic, includes both signs of mild general mental underdevelopment, and in various combinations specific disorders of speech development, school skills. Dyslexia - violation of reading, dysgraphy - various types of violation of the letter, including spelling dysgraphy, manifested in the inability to logically use and control on the letter well-mastered rules of spelling, dyskulkulii - account disorders. With encephalopathic forms, these disorders are combined with various complicating symptoms (psychopath-like, neurosis-like disorders, cerebral asthenia, etc.).
Treatment
Children with this form of disorder should be supervised by a child psychiatrist. This is necessary not only to conduct adequate drug treatment, psychotherapy, but also to decide together with psychologists and defectologists about the form of education. Children with mental retardation traditionally in our country are trained in specialized correction classes with a light program in general schools. Transfer to school VIII kind (auxiliary) is carried out in those cases if the level of general mental underdevelopment corresponds to mental retardation.
Forecast
With a clear tendency to reduce disorders with age, a lower level of cognitive productivity persists in adolescence and throughout adulthood.
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