[Report 1967] / School Medical Officer of Health, Nottingham City.

  • Nottingham (England). City Council.
Date:
1967
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1967] / School Medical Officer of Health, Nottingham City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    25/66 (page 23)
    Ten children or about 7% of the above-mentioned epileptic children were receiving special educational treatment as educationally sub-normal pupils. The incidence of mental sub-normality amongst the non-epileptic school population is approximately only 1%. It is a common clinical impression that children with epilepsy show a high incidence of maladjustment. A recent investigation into mal¬ adjustment among children entering a residential special school for epileptic children indicated that 64% were maladjusted. This conclusion was arrived at by using a questionnaire, which was a slight modification of one designed for a special survey of the incidence of maladjustment among children in the Isle of Wight. On this island just under 5% of all children were thought to show maladjustment to a significant degree. Head teachers of the City have recently co-operated with us in using the same questionnaire that was used in the Isle of Wight to investigate maladjustment among the children with epilepsy in the City of Nottingham. The figures are as follows: — Questionnaires completed in respect of 122 children: Number showing signs of emotional disturbance ... 47 (or 38%) Seventy-nine children (or 65%) were said to show lack of concentra¬ tion and were noted as having a short attention span. The maladjusted children were divided into age groups with a view to finding whether signs of emotional disturbance became more or less marked with increasing age. The results are shown in the following graph. It will be seen that the maladjustment increases to a maximum at about ten to eleven years of age and then decreases. Others have shown that 25% of epileptic children are two or more years educationally retarded in relation to age while only about 5% of the non-epileptic are so retarded. There are many reasons for this educational retardation. One of the major factors is probably the “blanks” or “absences” associated with sub-clinical epilepsy. Once the child falls behind educationally, he tends to become maladjusted, i.e., being withdrawn or anxious or, if he is an extraverted type of child, by becoming aggressive and interfering with the work of others. After the age of 10 to 11 years, there is a much better rate of adjustment although we do not know whether this is associated with a corresponding educa¬ tional improvement. It thus appears to us that an important preventative measure in respect of maladjustment is education. We would feel that the epileptic pupil showing signs of emotional disorder and educational retardation would benefit from special remedial education programmes designed and carried out within the ordinary school setting.” E. ARKLE F. E. JAMES. The periodic review of children with epilepsy by Dr. Hunter (one of the School Medical Officers) at a session set aside for the purpose should help to focus attention on those problems to the educational and social benefit of children with epilepsy.