Body image and psychopathology in adolescence: a controlled clinical study.

The aim of this study was to investigate mentally disturbed adolescents' problems of acknowledging and accepting the physical changes and sexual maturation of their bodies, in comparison with healthy adolescents. The study sample consisted of 60 adolescents (30 boys and 30 girls), 15-18 years of age, who had been referred for psychiatric examination, and 60 healthy controls, matched on the basis of age, sex, place of residence and level of education. The study methods were the self-rated questionnaire and psychiatric in-depth interview modified on the basis of the diagnostic profile of adolescents. Mentally disturbed adolescents had more negative attitudes towards developmental body changes than healthy adolescents. They were unable to describe the physical changes they had undergone. Healthy adolescents were more aware of developing sexual characteristics. On discriminant analysis, independent background variables explaining problems relating to sexual maturation in mentally disturbed adolescents were found to be a lack of or low number of peer relationships, and long-term stress. In the healthy adolescents, independent variables associated with problems in sexual maturation were found to be a lack of or low number of peer relationships and a single-parent home. We conclude that adolescents with psychiatric problems seem to have a poorer capacity to process mentally the ongoing bodily and sexual maturation of their bodies than matched healthy controls.

Psychiatric disorders in children with earlier infantile spasms.

In order to evaluate the occurrence of psychiatric disorder following infantile spasms, a long-term follow-up study (between three and 19 years) was made of 192 children in Finland. Psychiatric disorders were found in 53 of the children. 24 had infantile autism (transient in 14 cases), 16 of whom were also hyperkinetic, as were an additional 29 cases from the whole group. Considerable muscular hypotonia was frequently combined with infantile autism, but both tended to decrease with age. Autistic children often had psychomotor epilepsy and temporal lobe abnormalities, which suggests that organic lesions with a specific localization may be a pathophysiological basis for autism. In addition, the hyperkinetic children had more focal temporal abnormalities in their EEGs than did the children without psychiatric disorders.