Psychopathology in Children with Intellectual Disability: Assessment, prevalence and predictive factors

__Abstract__ This study’s main focus is psychopathology in children and adolescents with intellectual disability (ID). The main topics addressed in this study are the assessment of psychopathology in children (also including adolescents) with ID, the prevalence and impact of psychopathology in children with ID, and associated risk factors. The present study is an epidemiological study. In short, epidemiological studies are concerned with the study of patterns of disease occurrence in human populations, and with the factors that influence those patterns. Epidemiological research is empirical by nature, involves quantification of relevant factors, is probabilistic, and uses the method of comparison as a basic tool (Verhulst, 1995). The number of studies addressing the epidemiology of psychopathology in children with ID is limited, though it has increased in the last decade. Few systematic studies on the relationship between ID and psychopathology in children exist. Theoretical considerations and empirical findings suggest that children with ID are at higher risk than children without ID for developing psychopathology. Further, several other issues hamper our understanding of the subject, such as the use of different definitions for both ID and psychopathology, the lack of standardized assessment procedures, and the use of not so representative samples. In this chapter we will discuss some of the major issues in this research-field. Further, we will account for the choices made in this study in an effort to provide good quality data on the epidemiology of psychopathology in children with ID.

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