Psychiatric disorders, performance level at school and special education at early elementary school age

Abstract

We assessed the relationship between psychological deviance and performance level at school among 8-year-old children. The use of special education among children with psychiatric disorders was also studied. In Stage 1, 5813 children were studied using the Rutter Parent Questionnaire (RA2), the Rutter Teacher Questionnaire (RB2) and the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI). In Stage 2, a subsample (n = 424) of these children were interviewed, using the Isle of Wight Interview. In Stage 1, more children defined as low achievers (LAs) came from low SES families than did average (NAs) and high achievers (HAs). They also had more psychiatric symptoms, and they scored above the cutoff (13 points on the RA2, nine points on the RB2 and 17 points on the CDI) more commonly than other children. In Stage 2, two thirds of children who received special education had some psychiatric disorder. The probability of a child with psychiatric disorder obtaining some extra tutoring or special education was 3.1-fold when compared with children without psychiatric disorders. Depressive children and children with attention deficit disorders most commonly had extra tutoring (4.8-fold) when compared with children without psychiatric disorders. The probability of getting special education was highest for attention deficit disorders (6.2-fold), thereafter for anxiety (3.1-fold), and for oppositional/conduct disorders (2.8-fold).

An epidemiological study on Finnish school-aged children with learning difficulties and behavioural problems

“…This association between LDs and behaviour was independent of sociodemographic background factors. The overlap between LDs and behavioural and emotional problems has been shown in many previous studies (10,14,17,(31)(32)(33), but there are relatively few studies that examine the association between LDs and emotional problems (16,31,32). Our study showed that for boys, the association between LDs and behavioural and emotional problems was quite similar, but for girls, emotional problems were more prominent, even though the confidence intervals of the estimates overlapped (Table V).…”

“…The prevalence of children's emotional and behavioural problems have been reported to range from 5% to 20%, being more common among boys than girls (6)(7)(8)(9) and, the association between learning disabilities and behavioural and emotional problems has been indicated in many previous studies (3,(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15). They have also been found to be more persistent when they cooccur with behaviour problems in the early school years compared to learning disabilities occurring alone (10,11,13,16,17). Behavioural problems at 5 years of age related to speech/language and developmental delays seem to be good predictors of later learning disabilities (12,18,19).…”

“…In many studies male gender, low socioeconomic status (SES), family structure, the mother's and father's low educational levels (3,15,17,(20)(21)(22)(23)(24) and poor motor skills have been found to be risk factors for learning disabilities (8). In their study, Zubrick et al (8), for instance, indicated that children whose language emerged late had statistically significantly more gross and fine motor problems than those whose language developed within a normal range.…”

Psychopathology and Special Education Enrollment in Children With Prenatal Cocaine Exposure

“…Our findings that ADHD diagnoses, TRF externalizing problems, and CBCL internalizing problems, predict IEP enrollment are supported by studies demonstrating that children with psychiatric disorders are also more likely to receive special education services 39 . As mentioned earlier, there are high rates of ADHD 8 , and internalizing problems in special education populations 5 .…”

Validation of the Autism Spectrum Screening Questionnaire in a Total Population Sample

“…Low to moderate agreement between parents and teachers is a general finding in reports on child psychiatric symptoms (Achenbach et al 1987;Kumpulainen et al 1999;Touliatos and Lindholm 1981), and this has been interpreted as reflecting true differences in behaviour according to setting. In autism research, however, low agreement has often been viewed as a sign of poor validity of the instrument.…”