Mental development of sp. Mental health disorder: diagnosis or life sentence? Who and when can diagnose a child with mental retardation or mental retardation?

Being informed about frequently encountered and widespread topics in a particular area can save a person’s fate. A striking example is awareness of pathologies that often occur in childhood. You should be especially careful and attentive with them, because knowledge of how to promptly recognize developmental delays and mental infantilism in children makes it possible to correct deviations in a timely manner.

There are many examples of fairly rapid equalization of the pace of development of children with delays, thanks to the timely intervention of parents and specialists. Through long-term experiments and research on this topic, it was concluded that the group of children with mental development disorders is heterogeneous in the nature of the origin of the disease. Due to the characteristics of their origin and their predominant manifestation, several types of ZPR are distinguished.

Features of mental development

What is mental retardation? These are reversible, that is, correctable developmental disorders of the central nervous system in children aged 4-6 years. They are expressed in the slow development of intellectual and emotional-volitional personal qualities. The lack of correction of mental retardation can pose a danger to the development of a growing personality, since these disorders are characterized by difficulties in learning and the formation of healthy emotions, worldview and adequate social perception of the environment. That is why it is so important to identify problems in this area in time and consult a doctor - first, a pediatrician. Diagnosis of mental retardation is carried out exclusively collegiately, by a special commission consisting of medical specialists, teachers and psychologists. During the examination, the child is examined comprehensively, after which a general conclusion is established. On its basis, if necessary, the necessary treatment or, otherwise, correction of mental retardation is prescribed.

Today, the number of children with mental retardation is about 15% of the total child population. This conclusion is most often established for children aged 4 to 5 years. By this age, the emerging personality should exhibit some learning abilities and a desire to make more mature, age-appropriate decisions. A striking example of a healthy psyche can be the desire for independent behavior of a 4-year-old child in autonomous situations and the desire to act independently, learning about the world around him. Since the problems of children with mental developmental disabilities characterize the child’s personality as less mobile, with mental infantilism inappropriate for age, difficult to for training, doctors recommend a specially designed training program. Before starting treatment, it is necessary to ensure that the child is developing at a slow rate. In contrast, mental retardation affects a wide area of central nervous system functions, however, each of them is reduced in a mild form. Initially, such deviations are very difficult to distinguish, so to prevent the aggravation of possible developmental delays, it is better to consult a doctor.

Diagnosis of mental retardation

According to statistics, 1 in 4 children are susceptible to developing mental development delays, so monitoring the development of the central nervous system in children under 6 years of age is very important.

Information is collected about diseases suffered in early childhood.
A complete analysis of the child’s living conditions and hereditary information is carried out.
Neuropsychological testing is mandatory, taking into account the analysis of the child’s independence and social adaptation.
Speech mobility is diagnosed.
Particular attention is paid to the conversation with the patient in order to identify the characteristics of the intellectual process and emotional-volitional characteristics.

Classification

So, mental retardation (MDD) is divided into several types. According to the classification of mental retardation proposed by K. S. Lebedinskaya, there are 4 main clinical types of delay.

ZPR of somatogenic origin. The same signs of mental retardation: the predominance of gaming interests, lack of attention and memory are caused by long-term illnesses at an early age that were somatic in nature. Examples: diseases of the cardiovascular system, kidneys, respiratory tract, including bronchial asthma. A certain kind of pressure on the maturation of the central nervous system is exerted by long-term treatment of somatic diseases in the hospital, which also adds limited exposure to the senses (sensory deprivation).
ZPR of constitutional origin. A case caused by arbitrarily delayed maturation as a result of the influence of hereditary factors. Children are not infantile for their age, they do not behave according to their age, but as if they remain at the previous stage of development of younger children. The area of interest of children with such disabilities is more playful in nature than cognitive or educational. An important role here is played not only by the desire to learn, but also by the inability to remember large amounts of information and concentrate attention on one object, in the case of school-age children.
ZPR of psychogenic origin. The causes of this type of mental retardation are lack of attention or overprotection, as well as child abuse. They can cause certain delays in the development of psychogenic origin. Overprotection causes the following symptoms of delayed development: lack of will, psychological weakness, lack of understanding of one’s own desires, lack of initiative, egocentrism. Lack of attention makes children mentally unstable and painfully negative towards others, infantilely impulsive. Abuse creates unexpected symptoms of mental retardation.
ZPR of cerebral-organic origin. According to studies of the components of the classification of mental retardation, this type of delayed development is the most common manifestation of the disease. It manifests itself with primary non-severe organic damage to the brain. Deviations and mental retardation in children are expressed in the form of symptoms such as lack of interest in the world around them, insufficient brightness of emotions and imagination, high level of suggestibility, etc.

What could be the reason

The basis for deviations in the child’s psyche is biological and socio-psychological factors and shortcomings that lead to a decrease in the rate of development of the child’s intellect and emotional background.

The causes of cerebral retardation of constitutional origin may be:

Biological factors. This group includes minor local injuries and injuries to the central nervous system, as well as their consequences. They cause a further partial slowdown in the child’s mental development. Similar factors manifest themselves in problematic pregnancy and some complications that can accompany pregnancy: Rhesus conflicts, some types of intrauterine infections, injuries received during childbirth and many others.
Social or environmental factors. They cause delays and disruptions in the development of the psyche under the influence of overprotection or lack of attention, abuse or isolation of the child from the external environment and communication with peers.
Secondary factors. They occur in early childhood diseases that are difficult for a fragile body. For example, hearing or vision impairment due to damage to the corresponding organs due to diseases.
Metabolic factors. Changes in mental metabolism and increased need for certain vitamins and minerals.

Features of children with mental retardation

Let's look at what makes a child with this pathology different. The difference between mental retardation and mental retardation is that mental retardation is reversible and can be corrected. Intellectual impairments in children with mental retardation are mild, but affect all intellectual processes: perception, attention, memory, thinking, speech. This feature requires an individual and attentive approach, since the psyche of children with mental retardation is particularly unstable and fragile.

Peculiarities of the psyche of children with developmental delays are reduced to the following characteristics:

Differences in response to the environment. Liveliness of facial expressions, bright gestures, sudden movements. Preferences for learning exclusively through play.
Peculiarities in perception and learning ability. Reluctance to learn through general education programs: mandatory volumes of educational material for training in reading, writing and drawing.
Preference for the gaming part over other methods of obtaining information. Tirelessness and creativity in games, absent-mindedness and lack of attention in studies.
From the emotional-volitional component of the psyche. Emotional instability is clearly expressed. Against the background of high fatigue, nervous mood swings and hysterics occur when encountering unfamiliar or unpleasant situations for the child.
Love to fantasize. It is a means of psychological balancing. Repressing unpleasant situations and information by replacing them with non-existent events or people.

A feature of mental retardation is that compensation and correction of all types of disorders is possible in the early stages of their identification and only in conditions of special training and education. Playful inclinations of perception of the surrounding world are taken into account when involving children with mental retardation in educational and developmental activities.

Specialists are developing complex programs with outdoor games for children with mental retardation in combination with dosed educational information from the general program. This style of learning is necessary for compensatory restoration of missed stages of development, corresponding to age and the required level of psyche, intelligence and development of the central nervous system.

Prevention

It is not always possible to prevent all factors influencing a child’s developmental delay in comparison with generally accepted age norms. However, there are a number of methods, hygiene and preventive measures.

The list of main methods of prevention includes planning pregnancy, preventing any infectious and somatic diseases in both the mother and the child at an early age, avoiding mechanical, chemical and other negative effects on the fetus, as well as providing favorable conditions for the upbringing and development of the child.

Treatment

Harmonic infantilism or mental retardation can be corrected quite successfully if a child with mental retardation is placed in a well-organized developmental and educational environment.

The dynamics of a child’s development are determined by the significance of the disorders and pathologies, the level of intelligence, potential and level of performance of the child. Much attention should be paid to time - the sooner the diagnosis of mental retardation is established, the sooner correction can begin, without allowing the situation to worsen.

One of the key problems in constructing and selecting corrective programs is due to the variety of types of ZPR and their manifestations. You need to know that every child with harmonious infantilism has a number of characteristics, including insufficient development of the emotional-volitional sphere and immaturity of cognitive activity.

Harmonic infantilism can be corrected quite successfully, provided that the developmental environment is properly organized.

The dynamics of a child’s development depend on the depth of impairments, level of intelligence, characteristics of mental performance and early correction. The start time of correctional and developmental work is of paramount importance. The sooner a delay is identified and correctional activities are started, the greater the chance for the child to get closer in his development to the requirements of the norm.

What do corrective programs include?

Individual correctional programs take into account many characteristics of the child and the degree of development of intelligence and potential performance, as well as the peculiarities of the formation of the structure of mental activity, the development of sensorimotor function and much more.

Working with children with mental retardation requires a general, multifaceted approach. The treatment and correction of such deviations includes the participation of pediatricians from various fields. The complex of examinations and observations includes the work of child neurologists, psychologists, psychiatrists and speech therapists. Speech pathologists and general pediatricians are also involved in the work. Such correction is recommended for a long time and from preschool age.
For children with established mental development delays, it is recommended to attend specialized schools and groups or classes in preschool educational institutions.
The main features of children with mental retardation are the dosage of educational material and its play type of teaching. All material is divided into small information elements with an emphasis on clarity, frequent changes of activities and repeated repetition.
Particular attention is paid to the development of programs to improve memory, thinking and attention. Thanks to numerous art therapy techniques and game elements, improvements in the emotional and sensory sphere of activity are achieved.
A very important element of the work is constant monitoring by defectologists, psychologists and psychiatrists.
This type of mild impairment is restored through drug therapy in accordance with the identified impairments. An important addition: massages, physical therapy (physical therapy), physiotherapy and hydrotherapy.

Important!

Adults need to remember that the child’s psyche is very flexible and soft. This makes it possible to correct any delays and mild pathologies. Adapted educational programs for children with mental retardation are developed specifically for such deviations and are able to normalize the psyche and emotional-volitional qualities of the child to those corresponding to his age category. Almost all deviations from the norm can be corrected. However, work with delays in the mental development of a child should be carried out taking into account the individual characteristics of the child and in a timely manner.

Parents and teachers of specialized educational institutions should know that there are no general programs for correcting the developmental characteristics of the child’s psyche, even in schools for children with mental retardation.

Such correctional educational and developmental programs are formed individually for each child. Even for work in specialized classes for children with mental retardation, it is recommended to process the program for each child. The development and correction of the program is carried out jointly with specialists from psychological and psychiatric centers. Be attentive to your children, monitor their health and contact pediatric specialists in a timely manner.

The concept of “mental retardation”.

Mental retardation (MDD) - a special type of anomaly, manifested in a disruption of the normal pace of mental development of the child. May be caused by various reasons: defects child's constitution (harmonic infantilism), somatic diseases, organic lesions of the central nervous system (minimal brain dysfunction).

Children with mental retardation find themselves underachieving from the very beginning of their education. However, the insufficiency of their intelligence is more correctly defined not as backwardness, but as lag. In Russian science, mental retardation is understood as syndromes of temporary lag in the development of the psyche as a whole or its individual functions (motor, sensory, speech, emotional-volitional), and a slow pace of realization of the body’s properties encoded in the genotype. Being a consequence of temporary and mild factors (early deprivation, poor care, etc.), mental retardation can be reversible. Constitutional factors, somatic diseases, and organic failure of the nervous system play a role in the etiology of mental retardation.

Classification of ZPR K.S. Lebedinskaya.

The main clinical types of mental retardation are differentiated according to the etiopathogenetic principle: mental retardation of constitutional origin, mental retardation of somatogenic origin, mental retardation of psychogenic origin, mental retardation of cerebral-organic origin.

Each of these types of mental retardation has its own clinical and psychological structure, its own characteristics of emotional immaturity and cognitive impairment, and is often complicated by a number of painful symptoms - somatic, encephalopathic, neurological.

The presented clinical types of the most persistent forms of mental retardation mainly differ from each other precisely in the peculiarity of the structure and the nature of the relationship between the two main components of this developmental anomaly: the structure of infantilism and the nature of neurodynamic disorders.

At ZPR of constitutional origin we are talking about the so-called harmonious infantilism, in which the emotional-volitional sphere is, as it were, at an earlier stage of development, in many ways reminiscent of the normal structure of the emotional makeup of younger children. Characterized by the predominance of emotional motivation for behavior, heightened background mood, spontaneity and brightness of emotions with their superficiality and instability, easy suggestibility.

ZPR of somatogenic origin is caused by long-term somatic failure of various origins: chronic infections and allergic conditions, congenital and acquired malformations of the somatic sphere. Often there is also a delay in emotional development - somatogenic infantilism, caused by a number of neurotic layers - uncertainty, timidity, capriciousness associated with a feeling of physical inferiority.

ZPR of psychogenic origin is associated with unfavorable upbringing conditions that impede the correct formation of the child’s personality (the phenomenon of hypo-custody, hyper-custody, etc.). Traits of pathological immaturity of the emotional-volitional sphere in the form of affective lability (mood instability with pronounced manifestations of frequently changing emotions), impulsiveness, increased suggestibility, and indecisiveness in these children are often combined with an insufficient level of knowledge and ideas necessary for mastering school subjects.

ZPR of cerebral-organic origin It occurs more often than other types described above, and often has greater persistence and severity of disturbances both in the emotional-volitional sphere and in cognitive activity.

A study of the anamnesis of these children in most cases shows the presence of mild organic failure of the nervous system. Depending on the predominance in the clinical picture of the phenomena of either emotional-volitional immaturity or impaired cognitive activity, mental retardation of cerebral origin can be divided into two main options: 1) organic infantilism; 2) mental retardation with a predominance of functional impairments of cognitive activity.

As a rule, various types of organic infantilism represent a milder form of mental retardation of cerebral-organic origin, in which functional impairments of cognitive activity are caused by emotional-volitional immaturity and mild cerebrasthenic disorders.

In cases of mental retardation with a predominance of functional disorders, there is instability of attention, insufficient development of phonemic hearing, visual and tactile perception, optical-spatial synthesis, motor and sensory aspects of speech, long-term and short-term memory, hand-eye coordination, automation of movements and actions. Poor orientation in “right-left”, phenomena of mirroring in writing, and difficulties in differentiating similar graphemes are often found.

In this case, a certain partiality and mosaic pattern of violations of individual cortical functions is noted. Obviously, in this regard, some of these children experience primary difficulties in mastering reading, others in writing, others in counting, fourths show the greatest lack of motor coordination, fifths in memory, etc. X. Spionek (1972) emphasizes that such a child does not have a sufficient number of premises on which logical thinking is built.

For those entering school children with mental retardation has a number of specific features. In general, they are not ready for schooling. They have not sufficiently developed the skills, abilities and knowledge necessary for mastering program material, which normally developing children usually master in the preschool period. In this regard, children are unable (without special help) to master counting, reading and writing. It is difficult for them to comply with the norms of behavior accepted at school. They experience difficulties in voluntary organization of activities: they do not know how to consistently follow the teacher’s instructions, or switch from one task to another according to his instructions. The difficulties they experience are aggravated by the weakening of their nervous system. Students with mental retardation quickly get tired, their performance decreases, and sometimes they simply stop performing the activities they started.

Decreased performance and instability characteristic of these children attention have different forms of individual manifestation. In some children, the maximum tension of attention and the highest performance are detected at the beginning of the task and steadily decrease as the work continues; for others, concentration occurs only after a certain period of activity; Still others experience periodic fluctuations in attention and uneven performance throughout the entire task.

It has been established that many of these children experience difficulties in the process perception . First of all, this manifests itself in the fact that children do not perceive the presented educational material with sufficient completeness. They perceive many things incorrectly. This is important to keep in mind, since it is easy to assume that children who do not have hearing or vision impairments should not experience difficulties in the process of perception.

All children with mental retardation also have disadvantages memory: Moreover, these shortcomings apply to all types of memorization: involuntary and voluntary, short-term and long-term. First of all, as shown in the studies of V.L. Podobed, they have a limited memory capacity and reduced memorization strength. This extends to memorizing both visual and (especially) verbal material, which cannot but affect academic performance.

A significant lag and originality is also revealed in their development. mental activity . Both are most clearly manifested in the process of solving intellectual problems. Thus, when independently analyzing the objects proposed to describe them, children with mental retardation identify significantly fewer features than their normally developing peers.

The most typical mistakes of children with mental retardation are substitution of comparison of one object with all others by pairwise comparison (which does not provide a true basis for generalization) or generalization based on unimportant characteristics. The mistakes that normally developing children make when performing such tasks are only due to insufficiently clear differentiation of concepts.

The fact that after receiving help, the children of the group under consideration are able to perform various tasks proposed to them at a level close to the norm allows us to speak about their qualitative difference from mentally retarded children. Children with mental retardation have much greater potential in terms of their ability to master the educational material offered to them.

One of the psychological characteristics of children with mental retardation is that they have a delay in the development of all types of thinking. This lag is revealed to the greatest extent when solving problems that involve the use of verbal and logical thinking.

The development of visual and figurative thinking in children lags significantly behind. It is especially difficult for these children to operate in their minds with parts of images (S.K. Sivolapov). Their visual and effective thinking lags least behind in development. Children with mental retardation, studying in special schools or special classes, by the fourth grade begin to solve problems of a visual and effective nature at the level of their normally developing peers. As for tasks related to the use of visual-figurative and verbal-logical thinking, they are solved by the children of the group under consideration at a much lower level.

Different from the norm and speech children with mental retardation. Many of them have pronunciation defects, which naturally leads to difficulties in the process of mastering reading and writing. Children of the group under consideration have a poor vocabulary (especially active ones), and they are poorly formed empirical grammatical generalizations; Therefore, in their speech there are many incorrect grammatical constructions.

They differ significantly in their originality behavior and activities these children. After entering school, they continue to behave like preschoolers. The leading activity remains the game. Children do not have a positive attitude towards school. Educational motivation is absent or extremely weakly expressed. It was suggested that the state of their emotional-volitional sphere corresponds, as it were, to the previous stage of development.

It is very important to note that in the context of a mass school, a child with mental retardation for the first time begins to clearly realize his inadequacy, which is expressed primarily in academic failure. This, on the one hand, leads to a feeling of inferiority, and on the other, to attempts at personal compensation in some other field. Such attempts are sometimes expressed in various behavioral disorders (“antics”).

Under the influence of failures, a child with mental retardation quickly develops a negative attitude towards educational activities. This can and should be avoided. It is necessary to carry out an individual approach to each such child, based on deep knowledge of the peculiarities of the development of his mental processes and personality as a whole. The teacher needs to do everything possible to support the child’s positive attitude towards school at first. One should not emphasize the lack of success in educational activities and criticize for not entirely adequate behavior. Sometimes it is necessary to encourage the child to complete the proposed tasks based on playful motivation for the activity.

If the specified lag and not quite adequate behavior cannot be overcome in a public school, it is necessary, having prepared a detailed psychological and pedagogical description describing all the features of the child’s behavior in classes and in his free time, to refer the child to a medical-pedagogical commission, which will resolve the issue about the advisability of transferring him to a special school for children with mental retardation.

Features of the manifestation of mental retardation

Children with mental retardation are the most difficult to diagnose, especially in the early stages of development.

In children with mental retardation in a somatic state, frequent signs of delayed physical development are observed (underdevelopment of muscles, insufficiency of muscle and vascular tone, growth retardation), the formation of walking, speech, neatness skills, and stages of play activity is delayed.

These children have characteristics of the emotional-volitional sphere (its immaturity) and persistent impairments in cognitive activity.

Emotional and volitional immaturity is represented by organic infantilism. Children with mental retardation do not have the liveliness and brightness of emotions typical of a healthy child; they are characterized by weak will and weak interest in evaluating their activities. The game is characterized by a lack of imagination and creativity, monotony, monotony. These children have low performance as a result of increased exhaustion.

In cognitive activity, the following are observed: weak memory, instability of attention, slowness of mental processes and their reduced switchability. A child with mental retardation needs a longer period to receive and process visual, auditory and other impressions.

Researchers call immaturity of the emotional-volitional sphere the most striking sign of mental retardation; in other words, it is very difficult for such a child to make a volitional effort on himself, to force himself to do something. And from here attention disturbances inevitably appear: instability, decreased concentration, increased distractibility. Attention disorders may be accompanied by increased motor and speech activity. Such a complex of deviations (attention deficit + increased motor and speech activity), not complicated by any other manifestations, is currently referred to as “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder” (ADHD).

^ Impaired perception is expressed in the difficulty of constructing a holistic image. For example, it may be difficult for a child to recognize familiar objects from an unfamiliar perspective. This structured perception is the cause of insufficient, limited knowledge about the world around us. The speed of perception and orientation in space also suffers.

If we talk about the characteristics of memory in children with mental retardation, one pattern has been discovered here: they remember visual (non-verbal) material much better than verbal material. In addition, it was found that after a course of special training in various memorization techniques, the performance of children with mental retardation improved even in comparison with normally developing children.

Mental retardation is often accompanied by speech problems, primarily related to the pace of its development. Other features of speech development in this case may depend on the form of severity of mental retardation and the nature of the main disorder: for example, in one case it may be only a slight delay or even correspondence to the normal level of development, while in another case there is a systemic underdevelopment of speech - a violation of its vocabulary. grammatical side.

Children with mental retardation have a delay in the development of all forms of thinking; it is detected primarily during solving problems of verbal and logical thinking. By the beginning of school, children with mental retardation do not fully master all the intellectual operations necessary to complete school assignments (analysis, synthesis, generalization, comparison, abstraction).

Children with mental retardation are characterized by a limited (much poorer than typically developing children of the same age) stock of general information about the environment, insufficiently formed spatial and temporal concepts, a poor vocabulary, and undeveloped intellectual activity skills.

The immaturity of the functional state of the central nervous system is one of the reasons that children with mental retardation are not ready for schooling by the age of 7. By this time, as a rule, their basic mental operations have not been formed, they do not know how to navigate tasks, and do not plan their activities. Such a child has difficulty mastering reading and writing skills, often mixes letters that are similar in style, and has difficulty writing text independently.

In a mass school setting, children with mental retardation naturally fall into the category of persistently underperforming students, which further traumatizes their psyche and causes a negative attitude towards learning.

3. Physical exercise for parents.

Teacher: -Let's remember the traffic lights. What does the red light mean? Yellow? Green? Well done, now let's turn into a traffic light. At the same time, we will check your attention. If I say, “Green,” you stamp your feet; “Yellow” - clap your hands; "Red" - silence. And I will be a faulty traffic light and will sometimes show the wrong signals.

Among the four types of mental development delays, the only type that has intact brain systems is mental retardation of psychogenic origin. Children with mental retardation of psychogenic origin are somatically healthy and have intact mental systems. Delayed mental development is due to unfavorable upbringing conditions, which caused disturbances in personal development.

Unfavorable conditions for child development

Unfavorable development conditions include:

Neglect. This is a phenomenon where a child grows “like wild grass.” That is, he is provided with everything necessary for physiological development: (food, sleep, clothing), but there is complete lack of control over his mental development and personal formation. If the child does not attend preschool educational institutions, then his development is completely not subject to any educational programs. This often occurs in dysfunctional families or when parents are overly busy. Sometimes children are placed in the care of older family members who are primarily concerned with the child's physiological needs. Thus, not only does no one care for the child, but often they don’t even talk to him. In rural areas, a child is often deprived of full communication and conditions for development. Parents learn about developmental problems before school, when the child is not ready for school.
Overprotection. This situation is also extremely undesirable for the development of the child, as it deprives the child of independence, mastering everyday skills, and manifestations of strong-willed qualities. Children in such conditions often have a distorted personality, characterized by egocentrism, lack of focus, and infantilism.

Features of mental retardation of psychogenic origin

Children with mental retardation in this group have normal physical development. They are somatically healthy. Most of these children are diagnosed with brain dysfunction. Often such children have maternal deprivation, which manifests itself in depriving the child of maternal warmth and care. For this reason, children raised in an orphanage often have mental retardation of psychogenic origin.

Features of upbringing, such as: monotonous social environment; weak manifestation of individuality; deprivation leads to a decrease in intellectual motivation and lack of independence of behavior, which, in turn, leads to mental infantilism.

Another reason for the appearance of ZPR may be a family of an authoritarian-conflict type. In such a family, impulsive explosive reactions are constantly provoked, which are immediately suppressed. In this case, there is a weak-willed adherence to instincts, involuntary behavior, and intellectual and emotional activity is extinguished.

Authoritarian-conflict education is a psychotraumatic factor, leading to mental infantilism in an unstable form. This is a favorable environment for the emergence of pedagogical neglect. In addition, suppression and punishment, as methods of education, accumulate in the child’s psyche the traits of passivity, lack of independence, anxiety, and downtroddenness.

Problems of personality development, as a rule, appear immediately before the start of school. Children with mental retardation of psychogenic origin are characterized by mental immaturity. The point is not only in intellectual unpreparedness (low level of development of fine motor skills, underdevelopment of thinking and memory, instability of attention, underdeveloped phonemic hearing), but also in a low level of school motivation, inability to act voluntarily, anxiety and fear.

Correction of mental retardation of psychogenic origin

Delayed mental development of psychogenic origin is caused by environmental conditions, and, therefore, can be corrected simultaneously with changes in the external conditions of the child’s upbringing and development. The sooner developmental delay is identified, the more complete and effective the correction will be.

A child with mental retardation needs psychological and pedagogical support, which goes through a number of stages:

Diagnostics. Identification of child development features: emotional sphere, cognitive activity, health status and family education. After a comprehensive examination, the child is diagnosed.
Consulting parents about development prospects. If the child is of school age, then it is necessary to make the right choice of the form of his education. If the child is of preschool age, then the importance of correctional and developmental education for preparing for school and normalizing the child’s development is explained.
Consulting and selection of specialists to work with children.
Corrective and developmental work. Direct work to correct the child’s developmental deficiencies. The direct participation of parents at this stage is very important. The development program must be purely individual. However, it is necessary to organize group classes to ensure the child’s communicative activities.
Conducting interim diagnostics to determine the effectiveness of the program.
Continued implementation of the program or correction of the program if it is ineffective.

An individual correctional and developmental program can only be developed by a highly qualified specialist. He will also be able to evaluate its effectiveness and make the necessary changes if necessary. Provided early diagnosis and timely corrective measures, mental retardation of psychogenic origin can be easily corrected, and the child can enter school at the same time as his peers.

Children with mental retardation (mental development delay) are included in a special group of people mixed in terms of the degree of psychophysiological development. Psychiatrists classify mental retardation as a class of mild mental development disorders. Mental retardation today is considered a common type of mental pathology at an early age. The presence of inhibition of the development of mental processes should be discussed only on the condition that the individual has not yet gone beyond the boundaries of the primary school period. In cases where symptoms of mental retardation are observed during the high school phase, one should already talk about infantilism. The deviation, expressed in a delay in mental formation, occupies a position between abnormal development and the norm.

Children with delayed development are inherently afraid of new, unexpected experiences that inevitably appear in their lives as a result of changes in learning conditions. They feel an increased need for approval and attention. Some children may exhibit a change in their usual conditions, some may exhibit a peculiar reaction to punishment (they may begin to sway or sing). Such a reaction may be regarded as excessive compensation in a traumatic situation. Such children are characterized by increased sensitivity to influences of a rhythmic nature, the need for such actions and a love of music. Children enjoy attending music classes. They are able to quickly master various dance movements. Due to the influence of rhythm, such children quickly calm down and their mood becomes even.

Children with mental retardation have pronounced difficulties with adaptive behavior, which can manifest themselves in various forms. Limited opportunities for self-care and learning social skills, along with serious behavioral deficiencies, are characteristic features of children with mental retardation. Painful reactions to criticism, limited self-control, inappropriate behavior, aggressiveness, and often self-harm - all this can be observed. Problems with behavior are determined by the degree of developmental delay - the deeper the level of developmental delay, the more pronounced the violation of behavioral reactions.

Thus, the pathological condition, expressed in a delay in the formation of mental processes, can be considered as a polysymptomatic type of changes in the intensity and nature of development of children, which covers diverse combinations of disorders and their symptoms. Despite this, a number of key features, presented below, should be highlighted in the mental status of children with mental retardation.

The immaturity of various analytical systems and the inferiority of visual-spatial orientation are represented by the sensory-perceptual sphere. Psychomotor disorders include imbalance in motor activity, impulsivity, difficulty in mastering motor skills, and various motor coordination disorders. Mental activity is represented by a predominance of the simplest mental operations, a decrease in the degree of logic and abstractness of thinking, and difficulties in the transition to abstract-analytical configurations of mental activity. In the mnemonic sphere, there is a dominance of mechanical memorization over abstract-logical memory, a predominance of direct memory over indirect memorization, a decrease in memory capacity, and a significant decrease in involuntary memorization. Speech development is represented by limited vocabulary, slower acquisition of grammatical structure, difficulties in mastering written language, and deficiencies in pronunciation. The emotional-volitional sphere is represented by general immaturity and infantilism. The predominance of gaming motivation, the desire to obtain pleasure, and the inadequacy of motives and interests are observed in the motivational sphere. In the characterological sphere, there is a noticeable increase in the likelihood of various accentuations of characterological qualities and psychopathic manifestations.

Working with children with mental retardation

Methods of influence and correctional work with children with mental retardation must strictly correspond to the key positions of formation in a specific age period, based on the characteristics and achievements characteristic of a given age period.

In the first place should be correctional work with children with mental retardation, aimed at correcting and further development, compensation of such mental processes and its neoplasms that began to form in the previous age interval and which represent the foundation for development in the subsequent age interval.

Correctional and developmental work with children with mental retardation should create conditions and organize them in order to maximize the effective development of mental functions, which are especially intensively developed in the current period.

A program for children with mental retardation ideally should be aimed at creating the prerequisites for further successful development at a subsequent age, and at harmonizing the development of the child’s personality at the current age stage.

When constructing a strategy for correctional work aimed at development, it will be no less important, as L. Vygostky believed, to take into account the zone of immediate formation. By such a development zone we can understand the difference between the degree of complexity of the tasks that is accessible to the child when solving it independently, and that which he can achieve with the help of adults or friends in the group.

Correctional work with children with mental retardation should be structured taking into account the periods of development that are the most optimal for the formation of a certain quality or mental function (sensitive periods). Here you need to understand that when the formation of mental processes is inhibited, sensitive periods can also shift in time.

Several important areas of correctional work with sick children can be noted. The first direction is of a health nature. After all, the full formation of children is possible only under the condition of their physical development and health. This area also includes the tasks of organizing the lives of children, i.e. creating normal conditions for their further optimal life activity, introducing a reasonable daily routine, creating the best motor routine, etc.

The next direction can be considered correctional and compensatory effects using neuropsychological techniques. The current level of development of children's neuropsychology makes it possible to achieve significant results in corrective work with the cognitive activity of children. With the help of neuropsychological techniques, school skills such as reading, writing and counting are successfully leveled, and various behavioral disorders, for example, focus or control, can be corrected.

The next area of work includes the formation of the sensory-motor sphere. This direction is of particular importance when working with students who have deviations in sensory processes and defects in the musculoskeletal system. To develop the creative abilities of children with delayed development of mental processes, stimulation of sensory development is very important.

The fourth direction is the stimulation of cognitive processes. The most developed system today can be considered a system of psychological influence and pedagogical assistance in the full formation, alignment and compensation of developmental defects of all mental processes.

The fifth direction is working with emotional processes. Increasing emotional awareness, which implies the ability to understand the feelings of other individuals, expressed in the adequate expression and control of one’s own emotions, is important for absolutely all children, regardless of the severity of the pathology.

The last direction will be the development of activities characteristic of a certain age category, for example, playful or productive activities, educational activities and communicative ones.

Education of children with mental retardation

By the time they begin learning, children with delayed development of mental processes usually do not have fully formed core mental operations, such as analysis and synthesis, generalization and comparison.

Children with mental retardation are not able to navigate assigned tasks and do not know how to plan their own activities. If we compare them with mentally retarded children, their learning ability will be an order of magnitude higher than that of oligophrenics.

Students with mental retardation use help much better; they are able to transfer the demonstrated method of performing actions to similar tasks. Provided that teachers comply with special requirements for teaching such children, they are able to study educational information of considerable complexity, designed for students with normal development corresponding to their age category.

The peculiarities of teaching children with mental retardation are largely determined by the extent to which students acquire educational skills at the preparatory stage. In the preparatory class, the core objectives of teaching are correctional work in relation to specific defects in the development of students’ cognitive activity, their thought processes, compensation for deficiencies in basic knowledge, preparation for mastering key subjects, and the formation of mental activity in the course of comprehending educational material.
In teaching children suffering from retardation of the development of mental processes, one should be based on the tasks set by the requirements of the general education school curriculum, and also take into account a number of specific tasks and correctional orientation arising from the characteristics of the psychophysiological characteristics of schoolchildren in this category.

Practice shows that it is more expedient to begin preventing possible difficulties in the learning and school adaptation of children even in the conditions of preschool centers. For this purpose, a specific model of a preschool institution (DOU) with a compensatory educational orientation for children characterized by inhibited development of mental processes has been developed. In such institutions, correctional work is represented by: diagnostic and advisory direction, medical and health improvement and correctional and developmental direction. Specialist speech pathologists or speech therapists conduct correctional and developmental work with preschool children with the participation of the children’s families.

Classes for children with mental retardation take into account the state and degree of development of children, as a result of which they involve training in various areas: familiarization with the environment, development of speech functions, development of correct sound pronunciation, familiarity with fiction, training in play activities, preparation for further literacy training, formation of primitive mathematical concepts, labor education, physical development and aesthetic education.

If the child successfully masters the curriculum in specialized classes, as a result of the decision of the school medical-psychological-pedagogical council, the child is transferred to a general education school in a class corresponding to his level.

The information presented in this article is intended for informational purposes only and cannot replace professional advice and qualified medical care. If you have the slightest suspicion that your child has this disease, be sure to consult a doctor!