Preliminary Report of Validity for the Infant Comprehensive Evaluation for Neurodevelopmental Delay, a Newly Developed Inventory for Children Aged 12 to 71 Months

Objectives@#Early detection of developmental issues in infants and necessary intervention are important. To identify the comorbid conditions, a comprehensive evaluation is required. The study’s objectives were to 1) generate scale items by identifying and eliciting concepts relevant to young children (12–71 months) with developmental delays, 2) develop a comprehensive screening tool for developmental delay and comorbid conditions, and 3) assess the tool’s validity and cut-off. @*Methods@#Multidisciplinary experts devised the “Infant Comprehensive Evaluation for Neurodevelopmental Delay (ICEND),” an assessment method that comes in two versions depending on the age of the child: 12–36 months and 37–71 months, through monthly seminars and focused group interviews. The ICEND is composed of three parts: risk factors, resilience factors, and clinical scales. In parts 1 and 2, there were 41 caretakers responded to the questionnaires. Part 3 involved clinicians evaluating ten subscales using 98 and 114 questionnaires for younger and older versions, respectively. The Child Behavior Checklist, Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, Infant-Toddler Social Emotional Assessment, and Korean Developmental Screening Test for Infants and Children were employed to analyze concurrent validity with the ICEND. The analyses were performed on both typical and high-risk infants to identify concurrent validity, reliability, and cut-off scores. @*Results@#A total of 296 people participated in the study, with 57 of them being high-risk (19.2%). The Cronbach’s alpha was positive (0.533–0.928). In the majority of domains, the ICEND demonstrated a fair discriminatory ability, with a sensitivity of 0.5–0.7 and specificity 0.7–0.9. @*Conclusion@#The ICEND is reliable and valid, indicating its potential as an auxiliary tool for assessing neurodevelopmental delay and comorbid conditions in children aged 12–36 months and 37–71 months.

The Diagnostic Distribution of Psychiatric Disorders among the Population Under 19 Years Old: Based on the National Insurance Data

OBJECTIVES: As a preliminary study on the prevalence of mental disorders in Korean children and adolescents, we investigated the diagnosis distribution of mental disorders in people under 19 years of age using the health insurance data. METHODS: From the 2011 health insurance data of 1,375,842 people, the data of 286,465 people under 19 years old were extracted. Among them, we selected 10,778 with psychiatric diagnoses; male 6,453 (59.9%) and female 4,325 (40.1%). The frequency of psychiatric diagnoses in the males was 10,140 (62.7%) cases, which was significantly higher than that (6,031; 37.3%) in the females. We categorized the groups into 3 year intervals. RESULTS: In the males under 3 years old, F80 was the most prevalent diagnosis, followed by F98. F90 and F41 were the most prevalent in the 4-15 and above 16 years old groups, respectively. In the females, F98 was the most prevalent in the children up to 3 years old, while F80 was the second most prevalent. In the 4-6 years of age group, F98 was the most prevalent, followed by F93. F90 and F41 were predominant in the 7-12 and above 12 years old groups, respectively. CONCLUSION: In the analysis of the frequency of diagnosis of mental disorders in the population under 19 years old, there were significant differences in the distribution based on age and gender.