Mild mental retardation: causes, symptoms, treatment and prognosis

Causes of mental retardation

Oligophrenia is congenital, manifesting itself at the earliest stage of human development.
It's quite common. It is believed that the pathology occurs in 1% of the population. Of the total number of patients, mild degree is determined in 85%, moderate in 14%, and severe in 1%. Experts suggest that in fact the disease is even more widespread, since not all patients undergo a psychiatric examination. Boys get sick more often than girls. The main age for detecting pathology is 6-7 years. Mild forms are detected by the age of 17-18 years. Obvious deviations make themselves felt in the first years of life and require emergency treatment. The main causes of dementia:

• Intrauterine damage to a developing child due to traumatic brain injury during childbirth, asphyxia.
• Chromosomal abnormalities: Down syndrome, Williams syndrome. Angelman, fermentopathy and other pathologies.
• Infectious diseases of the mother leading to disruption of normal brain development. We are talking about neurosyphilis, herpes, cytomegalovirus, rubella, toxoplasmosis,
• Prematurity.
• Parental substance abuse.
• Intrauterine diseases: hydrocephalus, meningoencephalitis.

ZPRD with elements of autism

As a result of malfunctions of the central nervous system or the impact of severe infections on the child’s body, not only speech and mental development delays can form: in some cases, the disease is accompanied by signs of autism.

Autistic traits in a child’s behavior:

• Does not enter into emotional contact with people, does not smile, does not reach out to parents.
• Prone to frequent attacks of aggression, when he is dissatisfied with something, he can direct this aggression towards himself (biting himself, hitting himself).
• Stereotypical behavior: may sway for a long time in one place or walk in a circle, twirl one object in his hand, tends to place objects in a row, reacts negatively to any changes.
• Does not know how to play with toys, uses them in his own way, may be committed to only one toy or part of it.
• Avoids society, does not know how to interact with peers.

COST OF TREATMENT FOR MENTAL DISEASES

The duration of treatment in a hospital is from 14 to 90 days, depending on the severity of the disease.
TREATMENT IN A HOSPITAL.

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TREATMENT IN A HOSPITAL

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Stages of mental retardation

More recently, the traditional view of the types of oligophrenia has been revised.

Previously highlighted:

• Debility is the easiest type of intellectual disability.
• Imbecility – cases of a moderate form of developmental disorder.
• Idiocy is an advanced stage.

Each of these types was in turn divided into three degrees of severity.

Modern medical classification has excluded these terms for a number of reasons. The most significant is the penetration of terminology into the spoken language with a clear derogatory connotation.

At the present stage of psychiatry, there are 4 types of mental retardation:

1. Lightweight, appropriate for debility.
2. Moderate, from a clinical point of view, being uncomplicated imbecility.
3. Severe, manifested by an advanced imbecile clinic.
4. Deep, inherently idiotic.

How to treat oligophrenia

Nowadays, thanks to advances in psychiatry, mental retardation can usually be recognized at a relatively early age . Thanks to regular examinations by a pediatrician and neurologist, it is possible to identify characteristic signs of the disease and determine the degree of retardation in mental and mental development.

A pronounced effect should be expected from drug treatment only when mental retardation is caused by metabolic and/or endocrine disorders. In other cases, therapy can only alleviate the symptoms of the disease. To relieve psychomotor agitation, hyperactivity, and anxiety-depressive affect, antipsychotics and tranquilizers are used. Nootropics are indicated to improve blood supply to the brain.

But the main role in the treatment of oligophrenia is given to rehabilitation and psychological correction aimed at adapting the child to society, improving speech skills, developing motor skills, coordination, and attention. Additionally, exercise therapy is recommended to improve overall health.

get more detailed information about the treatment of oligophrenia in a medical clinic by calling the 24-hour anonymous phone number 8(969)060-93-93 .

Signs and symptoms of mental retardation

With oligophrenia, there is a systemic lesion of all types of mental functions that requires treatment.

Patients suffer from all intellectual abilities:

• attention;
• memory;
• emotional sphere;
• speech reproduction
• ability to perceive and analyze information.

Many patients develop movement disorders, diseases of internal organs, and neurological disorders.

Clinical manifestations of intellectual development defects depend on the form of severity and are important for deciding how to treat mental retardation and what the patient’s relatives should do.

Mild degree of dementia

Patients have an IQ of 50-70.

Main features:

• Low ability for abstract thinking.
• Inability to generalize.
• Lack of critical abilities.
• Predominant figurative and concrete thinking.
• Poor vocabulary.
• Emotional poverty.
• Increased suggestibility against the background of stubbornness.

With these disorders, this category of patients experiences:

• Good mechanical memory.
• Clear ability to perform routine activities that do not require creativity.
• Adaptability to life.

Persons with intellectual disabilities often have external defects:

• Irregularly shaped ears.
• “Mongolian fold” - epicanthus.
• The absence of part of the eye membrane is a coloboma.
• An increased distance between the eyes is hypertelorism.
• Defects of the heart and other organs.

Manifestations may require treatment not only from a psychiatrist, but also from other specialists.

Moderate to severe dementia

In this category of patients, IQ is in the range of 20-49.

They are characterized by:

• Flat (rudimentary) thinking.
• The ability to develop basic skills of self-care and neatness.
• Small vocabulary.
• Complete lack of ability to generalize the properties of phenomena and objects.
• Helplessness in any situation requiring intellectual effort.
• Tendency to mechanical imitation.

People with this pathology can perform primitive, routine work under control. They are either aggressive, or, on the contrary, timid and inhibited. They often exhibit hypersexuality and an increased appetite to the point of gluttony.

Profound degree of insanity

IQ in this case does not exceed 20.

When examining patients, the following is revealed:

• No signs of thinking.
• Inarticulate pronunciation of sounds.
• Complete misunderstanding of addressing them, lack of differentiation of people nearby.
• Inability to perform basic self-care skills.
• The presence of elementary emotions (joy, displeasure).
• Decreased response to stimuli.

Patients are in a supine position (fetal position). They require constant care and treatment. The prognosis is unfavorable.

Lightweight

With a mild form of mental retardation in children, the IQ level ranges from 50 to 69 points. Children with mild mental retardation are practically no different in appearance from their healthy peers. Problems, as a rule, begin at school age: children find it difficult to perceive and remember information from the teacher, they find it difficult to concentrate on completing a task, and they are constantly distracted. Even memorizing a four-line poem can be very difficult for a student. – Children with mild mental retardation often develop some strange behavior. They can be closed, unsociable, difficult to make contact and panicky afraid of everything new, in particular new acquaintances. But it happens that such a child, on the contrary, is hyperactive, he fools around too much, does some strange things, thus trying to express himself and attract attention. In any case, a problem of social adaptation may arise, says the oligophrenopedagogist. A child with mild mental retardation is able to experience the whole gamut of emotions, but complex, mixed emotions are more difficult for him to express. Also, such children can be too naive and suggestible, so they can fall under bad influence. As a rule, children with mild mental retardation can study in a correctional school using a special lightweight program. With regular sessions with a speech pathologist and psychotherapists, they achieve good results in their learning. In the future, they can receive a secondary specialized education and find a decent working profession, have a family and children.

Diagnosis of mental retardation

Detection of mild degrees of the disease in early childhood is difficult. The diagnosis is made by observing a child with suspected oligophrenia.

During the examination, the doctor takes into account the following data:

• Developmental delays.
• Conversations with relatives and the patient, during which all specific manifestations of the disease are identified.
• Psychological tests, questionnaires, analysis of the interpretation of sayings, proverbs, pictures and drawings.

The examination is supplemented by genetic techniques, MRI, CT, and encephalogram. Differential diagnosis is necessary to exclude schizophrenia.

General information

Mental retardation is a congenital or acquired condition in early childhood (up to 3 years) of general underdevelopment of the psyche with a pronounced lack of intellectual abilities.

Mental retardation can be caused by various etiological and pathogenetic factors acting during intrauterine development, childbirth or in the first years of life. In most cases, mental retardation is not a painful process, but a pathological condition, the result of harmfulness that once acted, and has no tendency to progress.

For a long time, the generally accepted term for denoting states of mental retardation was the term “oligophrenia” (Greek: oligos - small, phren - mind, i.e. dementia), which was proposed by E. Kraepelin (1915) to distinguish the congenital dementia he designated from acquired dementia (dementia).