Abstract

This study was to find age differences among children's symptoms reported by parents visited a mental health clinic in Seoul. Of 2,727 children(2,007 boys, 720 girls) there were 941( 34. 5%) aged 0 to 3 years, 793 (29.1 %s) 4 to 6 years, 313 (11. 5%) 7 to 12 years, and 152(5.6%) 13 to 18 years. The symptoms the most frequently reported by parents were in order language deficiency, attention difficulty, social isolation, autistic behavior, retarded intellectual development, motor tic, emotional language problems, learning difficulty, etc.. Chi-square test was used to find age differences among children's problems: in the age group 0 to 3 years language deficiency and autistic behavior were significantly reported, in the age group 4 to 6 years language deficiency, retarded intellectual development, and social isolation, in the age group 7 to 12 years learning difficulty, low academic motivation, attention difficulty, and tic, and in the age group 13 to 18 years delinquent behavior and somatic symptom. The significant symptoms of each age group indicated that children's problems were likely associated with delay, distortion, or failure of critical developmental tasks of a given period, Of 2,727 1,238(45.4%) receiving assessment for diagnosis showed a similar trend in the distribution of disorders: in the age group 0 to 6 years there was high rate of developmental disorders and in the age group 6 to 12 years there was high rate of diagnoses related to school performance.