Are Psychiatric Disorders are Common Amnog Mental Retarded people?

Scientists have found that psychiatric disorders are more common among mentally retarded people. Most of the children with mental retardation are depressed. This can be partly due to the illness itself and partly due to difficulties they face in their life. Mentally retarded children are more prone to get abused. When a child get abused, it impacts his or her mental status very badly. If the child faces these psychological trauma over and over again, development of psychiatric disorders such as depression is inevitable.

Mental Retardation is Changed to Intellectual and Development Disabilities

Mental retardation is used to call people who have learning difficulties. The term has been considered inappropriate. There was a need for an proper word to address these people. Now, according to the ICD 11, the term is replaced by 'intellectual and development disabilities'. This new term addresses and describes people with learning difficulties very well.The new term gives more respect to such people.Even though 'mental retardation' is still been widely used, even among medical professionals, the new term will come in to use in the near future.

How to assess mental status of patients

Mental state examination is a very important part of clinical assessment in a psychiatric patient. Most of the time, it is the only method available to diagnose the psychiatric disorder which the patient is suffering from. Therefore, it is a very important part of the clinical management of a psychiatric patient. The examination is designed to assess the patents appearance, mood and affect, speech, thought process, thought content, insight, judgment, impulsivity and reliability.

The examination should be taken at a quite and non-threatening environment for the patient. The place should be arranged to secure the patient’s privacy. There should not be any object that can be used as weapon. Start the examination by recording the time and date.