ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on psychological problems and psychological adjustment in the young people. A problem in defining psychological disorder arises when one’s main concern is with physically handicapped adolescents. Very little is known about the prevalence of psychiatric or psychological disorders in handicapped adolescents, and even for younger children information is scanty. Overall, ‘psychiatric disorder was judged to be present when there was an abnormality of behaviour, emotions or relationships which was continuing up to the time of assessment and was sufficiently marked or sufficiently prolonged to cause handicap to the child himself and/or distress or disturbance in the family or community’. Although a great deal of clinical material is available, there have been few epidemiological studies of non-handicapped adolescents. The few other epidemiological studies which have been carried out to estimate psychiatric disorder in adolescence give similar results.
