To investigate the psychopathology of immigrants' children and psychiatric service utilization by the immigrant families, data were collected from the files of all 35 immigrant children seen over a 3-year period at the Community Mental Health Centre of the Athens University Psychiatric Department. Immigrant children were matched by age, gender and intake date with 70 Greek children. Data concerned information about the child's place of birth, current living conditions, parents' country of origin, social and economic situation, occupations and educational status, social insurance, psychiatric history, referral source, diagnostic and therapeutic services rendered, number of sessions and outcome. Utilization of services was assessed 6 months after intake. No significant differences were found regarding family's structure and parents' psychopathology. However, immigrant families had significantly worse economic situations, lower status jobs, worse housing and were usually uninsured. No significant differences were observed regarding service utilization parameters, except concerning 'cooperation with other services' No differences were found regarding frequency or type of psychiatric diagnosis. However, 91% of the immigrant group received a psychosocial diagnosis as opposed to 49% of the Greek group. Immigrant children did not present more serious or diverse psychopathology than did Greek children. Immigrant families had equal levels of service utilization as Greek families. However, it was apparent that immigrant families did not apply for help as readily as their Greek counterparts.
This study investigates the WISC-III profile in Greek children with learning disabilities (LD). The sample consisted of 180 children diagnosed with learning disability (136 boys, 44 girls) aged 6.11 to 14.4 years. The Mean Full-scale IQ is 96.08, Mean Verbal IQ is 96.38, and Mean Performance IQ is 96.61. On individual subtests, the lowest mean scores are for Digit Span and Arithmetic whereas the highest are for Similarities and Picture Completion. Forty eight percent of our sample has a higher Verbal Intelligence, while 46.7% has a higher Performance Intelligence. These results indicate that the WISC-III profile in Greek-speaking children with LD is similar to that shown by an English-speaking sample with respect to the most difficult subtests. This finding implies that despite linguistic differences between the Greek and English languages, deficits in short term memory and working memory are responsible for the emergence of learning disabilities in both languages.
Research has shown that specific developmental language disorders (SDLD) may develop over time into other impairments or disorders. For instance, children with these diagnoses often show learning, social adjustment or behaviour disorders in adolescence. On the other hand, many professionals claim that early intervention has a significant effect on these disorders. The question which arises is whether early intervention can forestall the development of these more serious consequences in adolescence. The aim of this study is to examine adolescents who had been diagnosed with SDLD in childhood and who had attended during their preschool years an Early Intervention Programme (EIP) within a Community Mental Health Centre. These adolescents' outcomes are compared with those of adolescents who had also been diagnosed with SDLD, but who had not complied with therapy. The experimental group (N=44), now have a mean age of 13 years, whereas the control group (N=52), who had not accepted therapy, have a mean age of 14 years. The parameters which were investigated were school achievement, social and emotional adjustment, behaviour, language skills, and their parents' attitudes. Statistical analysis shows that although some of the treated adolescents now exhibit learning difficulties, those who began their therapy before the age of 5 are presently showing significantly better concentration and behaviour than all the other groups. In conclusion, early intervention seems to be effective for children with SDLD and may restrict the appearance of more serious social adjustment and behavioural problems in adolescence.
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