Assessment of emotional and behavioral profile of children with Intellectual Disability

Globally the prevalence of emotional and behavioural problems are increase.It is already known that children with developmental problems may have up to 4 times the likelihood of having a concurrent mental health diagnosis compared with children who are typically developing. These problems not only impact on the daily functioning of children and put a strain on family but also hinder their learning and further development. Early identification and management of behavioural problems will help improve the quality of life and outcome. With this study we aim to identify emotional and behavioural problems which coexist in children with intellectual disability. We propose to conduct a prospective observational cross sectional study involving 30 children with Intellectual Disability aged between 2 years to 15 years presenting to Department of Paediatrics unit 1, Kasturba Hospital, Manipal. Institutional ethics committee approval has been obtained prior to the commencement of the study. The study will be registered under CTRI. A written informed consent will be obtained from care givers of each child prior to the recruitment into the study, since children with intellectual disability are being enrolled assent form will not be signed by them. A detailed history of presenting illness including developmental history will be recorded. Developmental examination and VSMS of each child will be done by the investigator. SDQ parent questionnaire will be filled by the parents. Impact questionnaire will be administered by the examiner. Scoring of SDQ questionnaires will be done by the examiners and results will be noted. All the data will be compiled and subjected to statistical analysis using mean, paired t-test, and simple linear regression, and compilation of the result will be done.