298 institutionalised mentally retarded patients in Institute of Mental Health, Madras were studied for the aetiological factors, levels of intelligence, associated disorders and family structure and compared with 163 matched group of mentally retarded attending the outpatient services of the Institute of Mental Health. In 41% of the institutionalised the cause was unknown, 29.3% had infective ...

Urinary excretion of ultraviolet-light-absorbing end products of metabolism was studied in mentally retarded children and schizophrenic adults. Excretion of the major end product of pyrimidine metabolism, pseudouridine (5-ribosyluracil), and one of the catabolic derivatives of nicotinic acid, N -methyl-2-pyridone-5-carboxamide, were both found to be depressedin more than half the mentally retar...

Grandparents acknowledge several benefits when raising their grandchildren. These include a sense of purpose, a second chance in life, an opportunity to nurture family relationships, a chance to continue family histories, and receiving love and companionship. Grandparents also benefit from giving and receiving love, and perceiving themselves as more effective caregiver. An attempt was made to c...

The accuracy and stability of self-image of 21 mentally retarded adults and 24 nonretarded adults were studied. The subjects were confronted with a distorting mirror that made their faces look either fatter or slimmer. Results showed that retarded adults saw themselves as more distorted than did non-retarded adults. Significant sex differences in the retarded population were found. Both the pre...

Retarded children show marked susceptibility to learned helplessness. Three experiments illustrate how adults may foster this helplessness. In Experiment 1, college students reported causal attributions for failure and expectancies of future success for either "a 6-year-old child" or "a 9-year-old mentally retarded child with a mental age of 6 years." In Experiment 2, students reported attribut...

The prevalence of minor physical anomalies was examined in a sample of 109 children with idiopathic mental retardation (65 boys and 44 girls). Control group consisted of 246 healthy schoolchildren (123 boys and 123 girls) aged 8 to 12 years. A comparison was made between number of found minor anomalies per child (W1) and their Waldrop weight scores (W2) in healthy and mentally retarded (MR) chi...

" In my report last year, I discussed somewhat fully both the principles and methods of dealing with children who are mentally retarded or feeble-minded. It was shown that for practical purposes they fall into three groups:?(a) those who are dull (mental impairment) or backward (their normal development hindered by untoward circumstances); (b) the mentally defective who are in some measure educ...

Perhaps I can best introduce this discussion of the dynamics of mental retardation with some personal reminiscences. It is now 28 years ago that I first began to work in an institution for the mentally retarded, at Letchworth Village in New York, at that time one of the most distinguished of the institutions for the retarded in the U.S.A. — distinguished particularly because it had a large and ...

The study was carried out in 25 mentally retarded children and compared with equal number of normal children. They were subjected to detailed psychiatric evaluation and dental examination. The dental anomalies were corroborated with cephalometric analysis of lateral cephalograms. It was concluded that all mentally retarded children had some dental abnormality in them in form of dental malocclus...