Spain: Increase in Mental Disability Noted in Children and Youth
During this part of their life, some 22 percent of all Spanish children and adolescents exhibit some type of mental disability. Mental impairments have become an important social and health problem for many children and adolescents, not just because of the specific characteristics of such conditions, but also because their manifestations may continue into other stages of development, particularly in the absence of timely diagnosis and due treatment.
The main mental ailments produced during childhood and adolescence, their diagnosis, assessment and importance for patients, were the topics of the recent IX National Congress of Childhood and Juvenile Psychiatry, organized by the Spanish Association of Childhood and Juvenile (Asociación Española de Psiquiatría Infanto Juvenil, AEPIJ).
According to doctor María Jesús Mardomingo, Head of Childhood Psychiatry of the Gregorio Marañón Hospital in Madrid and President of the Congress Organization Committee there were two concurring aspects at this annual event: " the 50th Anniversary of the Association and the occurrence of mental disabilities being detected at earlier ages in children and adolescents."
At the beginning of the past century, for example, depression affected young people mainly after 20 years of age, while in the last third of the XX century, depression was found to also affect children younger than 12. Dr. Mardomingo explained: "This increase in psychiatric diseases among children and adolescents is partly due to social and family changes...the change in the environment surrounding us and the way that society has evolved."
What are the psychiatric disturbances that may affect children and adolescents?
In the field of childhood and juvenile psychiatry there are, in accordance with international classifications, several groups of mental disturbances. The most common are those related to attention deficit and hyperactivity, behavior disturbances and anxiety. Other less common and more severe are: generalized disturbances of development such as autism or schizophrenia. Other psychiatric problems also affecting children and adolescents are psychosomatic diseases, depression, learning disturbances and personality problems.
During a given year, approximately 20% of children and adolescents of Spain present some type of psychiatric disturbance of minor to severe intensity demanding some type of intervention. A large percentage is related to anxiety and depression.
"In these cases, it is not easy to determine if the disturbance is nearer to anxiety or to depression, nevertheless the manifestation of episodes of this nature have become the most frequent among the pediatric population attending Primary Health Clinic consultations. Occasionally, visits reveal physical symptoms related to anxiety or depression," explains Dr. Prudencio Rodríguez Ramos, of the Childhood and Juvenile Psychiatry Department of the Mental Health Center of Tetuán in Madrid and vice president of the organizing committee of the Congress.
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