Psychopathology and mental retardation: A study of 100 mentally retarded children: I. Psychopathology.

The authors studied 100 mentally retarded children referred to a psychiatric clinic in regard to the severity of their retardation, their ages at the time of referral, their social class, their presenting symptoms and diagnoses, and the effects of organicity on their clinical pictures. They found that 38 of these children were psychotically disturbed, 13 had no evidence of psychiatric disorder, and 49 showed symptoms of characterologic, neurotic, behavioral, or situational disorders. Although the incidence of emotional disorder was high among these children, their symptoms did not differ in kind from those found in a group of nonretarded children referred to the clinic.