Mental Subnormality and Illness

The purpose of this study was to re-affirm our clinical impression that non-institutionalized children whose head circumference was below minus 2 standard deviations were mentally subnormal and frequently had growth failure. A group of 134 children with a head circumference below minus 2 standard deviations from the mean were studied, and all but one were mentally subnormal. The most severe mental retardation was noted in the group of children with a head circumference of minus 4 standard deviations or below. We found, as have others, that children with mental retardation have height and weights below the expected norm and that children with a head circumference below minus 2 standard deviations have even lower mean heights and weights. The head circumference of 31 children with growth failure and normal intelligence was normal for age and sex, therefore disproving the concept that the abnormally small child has a proportionally small head. In the child with growth failure, should the head be proportionally small (below minus 2 standard deviations), mental subnormality should be suspected. We feel that the head circumference measurement has taken on new clinical significance in that our data support its use in suspecting the association of mental subnormality in children with growth failure and a head circumference of below minus 2 standard deviations from the mean for age and sex.

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ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHIC AND ETIOLOGIC FINDINGS IN MENTAL RETARDATION

PEDIATRICS ◽

10.1542/peds.31.3.478 ◽

1963 ◽

Vol 31 (3) ◽

pp. 478-485

Author(s):

Gerald D. LaVeck ◽

Felix de la Cruz

Keyword(s):

Mental Retardation ◽

Metabolic Disorders ◽

Mentally Retarded ◽

Motor Dysfunction ◽

Diagnostic Aid ◽

Mentally Retarded Children ◽

Mental Subnormality ◽

Etiologic Diagnosis

A series of 578 institutionalized mentally retarded patients was evaluated by a multi-discipline approach in order to establish a presumptive etiologic diagnosis. Abnormal electroencephalographic findings were found to be related to the age of the patient, the severity of retardation, and the presence of seizures or motor dysfunction. In this series 65.9% had abnormal tracings, and the most frequent abnormality was a focal change in 18.7%. However, focal abnormalities correlated with seizures and motor dysfunction so that no specific electroencephalographic aberration was characteristic of mental subnormality. Abnormal tracings were most frequent in nonseizure patients when subnormality was caused by intoxication, new growths, metabolic disorders, infectious processes, trauma, and encephalopathy of unknown cause in decreasing order of frequency. Abnormalities were seen in 36.4% of "cultural-familial" defectives and those whose intellectual defect was presumably due to psychologic factors. It is believed that electroencephalography is a valuable diagnostic aid in the evaluation of mentally retarded children.

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