Cerebral palsy is defined as a permanent change of posture and movement development, causing limitations in activities that are assigned to a non-progressive disorder that occurs early in the developing brain. The presence of psychiatric comorbidity brings functional deterioration and worsens quality of life of these children and their recognition and treatment should be part of routine of rehabilitation centers. This project aims to study psychiatric comorbidities in cerebral palsy. We evaluated 550 individuals diagnosed with cerebral palsy coming from a tertiary physical rehabilitation center. The most frequent psychiatric comorbidity was intellectual disability. Other frequent psychiatric comorbidities were anxiety disorders, behavioral disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorder and depression. Although it was not the objective of this work to study the occurrence of epilepsy in this population, we observed that 43.2% of our patients had this situation. The presence of autism spectrum disorders was significantly higher in patients with epilepsy. The presence of a psychiatric disorder significantly impacted the functionality of children with cerebral palsy. Thinking about the rehabilitation of these subjects is to take in account the presence of psychiatric disorders. The active search of comorbidities should be a routine practice in tertiary rehabilitation centers. Thinking about the rehabilitation of patients with cerebral palsy should extrapolate the physical goals and look with the same attention to the emotional, behavioral, academic and social aspects.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.