Presentation Information
[SY-40-04]Influence of ethnocultural factors on clinical and neuropsychological characteristics of intellectual disordersin children of the Trans-Baikal region
*Anatoly Vasilevich Sakharov1, Yliya Lazo2 (1.Serbsky National Medical Research Centre for Psychiatry and Narcology(Russia), 2.Chita State Medical Academy(Russia))
Keywords:
children,mental retardation,intelligence,epidemiology,catamnesis
The Aginsky Buryat Okrug is located in the Transbaikal Territory, where 62.5% of the population are Buryats.The incidence of mental retardation in the Buryat district has been unstable over the past 10 years, but the proportion of mental retardation in the overall structure of disorders in children has increased. This became the subject of the study.Children aged 6-7 years were examined using a continuous method. Intellectual developmental disorders were diagnosed more often in children from the ethnocultural region than in Slavic children (p<0.001). Mental retardation in Buryat children had a number of clinical features: diffuse neurological microsymptoms in the form of anisoreflexia, neurosis-like symptoms in the form of general motor retardation and stuttering, and psychopathic disorders in the form of inhibition. According to the Wechsler test, the disorders were confirmed, but the Buryat children had a low verbal score (p<0.05), which is explained by communication difficulties when using two languages and it limits the use of the Russian-language version of the Wechsler test. During neuropsychological examination, children of the Buryat ethnic group more often had difficulties in performing tests for oral praxis, reciprocal coordination, somatognosis, and logical-grammatical representations (p<0.02). This indicates immaturity of the parietal cortex and general cerebral immaturity.According to three different methods of factor analysis, it was established that the development of intellectual disorders in children of the Trans-Baikal region is influenced by alcohol abuse by parents, low educational level of parents, pathology of pregnancy and childbirth, male gender, presence of other children with mental retardation in the family, and the ethnocultural factor. However, subsequent assessment of the follow-up of children of the ethnocultural region with intellectual disabilities established positive dynamics of the identified disorders in adolescence.