Intellectual competence of children who are beginning inpatient and day psychiatric treatment

Abstract

Intellectual abilities of 300 children with serious emotional disorders, referred to either psychiatric day‐ or inpatient‐hospital treatment, were compared. Comparisons also were made to WISC‐R standardization data. The findings indicated that children referred to inpatient settings were similar in intellectual competency to children in day treatment. Also, children with serious emotional disorders did not appear to differ strongly in clinically meaningful ways from the WISC‐R standardization sample, a finding that replicates results of other investigators. Three distinct, clinically useful profiles emerged from a cluster analysis of the total group that may be practical in planning educational and therapeutic interventions in treatment settings for seriously disturbed children. The profiles underscored the wide range of intellectual abilities represented among these children.

Confirmatory factor analysis of the WISC–III with child psychiatric inpatients.

“…The means are below the population mean, but the standard deviations are within the range of the population standard deviations as reported in the WISC–III manual. These results are similar to those of Zimet, Zimet, Farley, Adler, and Zimmerman (1994), who found that children in an inpatient and day psychiatric treatment hospital scored lower than the standardization sample on 7 of 10 WISC–R subtests…”

Intra-Individual Subtest Variability on the Dutch Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children—Revised (WISC–RNL) for Children with Learning Disabilities, Psychiatric Disorders, and Epilepsy

“…Some researchers have provided evidence for elevated variability in pathology (Zimet, Goodman Zimet, Farley, Shapiro Adler, & Zimmerman, 1994;Mayes, Calhoun, & Crowell, 1998;Greenway & Milne, 1999;Ryan, Tree, Morris, & Gontkovsky, 2006), while others ardently advocate against any use of measures based on intersubtest variability (Watkins & Glutting, 2000;Watkins, Glutting, & Youngstrom, 2005). In the studies by Watkins and his colleagues, intersubtest variability did not have a significant incremental validity in predicting academic achievement over and above Full-Scale IQ in samples of exceptional children, mainly children with learning disabilities.…”

Longitudinal IQ Trends in Children Diagnosed with Emotional Disturbance: An Analysis of Historical Data

“…Accordingly, it would not have been appropriate to include such data in our analyses. Zimet, Zimet, Farley, and Adler [22], however, found no significant differences in IQ between ED children with a psychiatric disorder and non-psychiatric ED children. Furthermore, due to the wide variability in the criteria to qualify for ED services within and between different schools [23], it is unclear if there is a single behavioral measure applicable to the entire ED population.…”