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| Psychiatric Disorders in Children |
Childhood disorders are not frequently diagnosed. One explanation for that is lack of public awareness that children, like adults, can suffer from mental dis-orders. Behavior disorders in children represented 5% and 8.2% of all cases attending the outpatient psychiatric facilities in Ain Shams University Hospital in 1967 and 1990 respectively (16). In 1990, the presenting complaints were mainly in the form of hyperactivity, aggression, stealing and wandering around. This wasmore common in patients from cities than from villages.
In the Egyptian village, conditions are conducive to developing happy and socially secure children.
Such children learn crafts and appropriate conduct smoothly from their everyday coexistence with parents and elders and are gradually initiated into fuller social responsibilities of the extended family community.
If such people move to the cities, their work becomemechanized,mothers as well as fathers work away from home. They pass on to their children little knowledge and fewer skills that could earn them the children’s respect. In such circumstances, it is difficult for parents to train their children in social responsibilities, already different from those with which the parents themselves grew up, hence delinquency and behavior disorders tend to develop out of lack of modeling and identity crises. Since compulsory schooling is more enforced in the cities, there is a tendency to see more cases of educational problems.
The total number of schoolchildren aged between 6 and 12 years were the subject of an epidemiological study investigating the prevalence of anxiety symptoms in childhood and the underlying psychiatric disorder (24). The total number of children was 8,459. Prevalence of anxiety disorders was found to be 7.9%, while that of hyperkinetic disorder is 2.2%. Stammering was reported in 0.93%, and nocturnal enuresis was represented in 1.9% of the sample.
Bedwetting was found to be tolerated up to the age of 5 or 6 years. The age at which parents decide to do something about it depends on their tolerance and their degree of sophistication, usually between 7 and 10 years.
The highest number of stammerers was found in two age groups, 6 to 7 and 11 to 12 years. The apparent rise in the incidence between 6 and 7 years may be due to the anxiety associated with school entry and soon after beginning to mix with schoolmates.
The increase between 11 and 12 years may be associated with onset of puberty, associated with problems of independence, widening of the horizon of the adolescent, fear of the opposite sex, self-criticism and moral judgement. At all ages, there were more male than female stammerers, giving a gender ratio of 3.2: 1.
