Offering Interdisciplinary Evaluation and Crisis Intervention in View of Neuropediatric, Psychiatric, and Special Needs Aspects for Mentally Disabled Children showing Behavioral Problems as their Cardinal Symptom

Aims: The Centre for children with special needs, can be contacted, if mentally disabled pupils show challenging behavior.

Professionals with expertise in neuropediatrics, psychiatry, and in special needs and special education will initiate a long-term resolution of the crisis in an outpatient setting based on differentiated diagnostics.

Methods: The diagnostic part is based on a systemic multimodal approach and is performed during the following three separate meetings:

• A system meeting including teachers, social education workers, and therapists in terms of a Reflecting Team.

• An individual diagnostic.

• An individual meeting with the parents.

Results: Etiological backgrounds of the deterioration could be found as follows:

• Neuropediatric conditions that have not been recognized so far, such as genetically defined syndromes, deletion syndromes, trysomies, monosomies, epilepsies, and cerebral palsy.

• Somatic diseases, in particular pain syndromes.

• Regulatory disorders &#61485.

• Psychosocial stress situations of various kinds, for example, overprotection, neglect, etc.

• Psychiatric disorders, such as, psychotic states, suicidal tendency and posttraumatic stress disorders.

• Disorders in the autism spectrum.

• Mental overload at school due to the misjudgment of the stage of development, unrecognized executive function disorders, or very inhomogeneous ability profile.

Over 90% of the patients referred to us can stay at their institution in spite of their crisis. In almost every case, the professional and problem-centered support leads to a clear improvement of the original behavior.

Conclusion: The interdisciplinary connection of expertise in special needs education, neuropediatrics, and psychiatry as a means of recognizing and treating underlying causes of behavioral problems of mentally disabled children can lead to a clear improvement of the quality of life of these children and adolescents.

Keywords: mental disorder, challenging behavior, etiology of mental distress, offers of medical and special needs education.