Abstract

The present study was designed to find etiology of non-genetic ID/MR and evaluated the contribution of demographic, prenatal, perinatal and neonatal factors to the prevalence of intellectual disability among individuals aged 10–17 years in Himachal Pradesh. This study explored the utility of subdividing mental retardation firstly on the basis of IQ and then further on the basis of presence or absence of neurological disorders. Kamat’s Binet test was performed for dividing cases into mild (IQ=50-55 to 70 ) and serious (IQ=50-55-<20-25) These cases were further divided in to isolated and cases with other neurological abnormalities for eradicating the effects of these disorders on various degrees of mental retardation. This study concluded that prevention of mild retardation requires anticipation of some risk factors such as low maternal education, maternal history of pregnancy loss, lack of prenatal care, neonatal diarrhoea and neonatal infection, but serious cases are less compatible to the factor, neonatal diarrhoea. These risk factors found to be associated with MR, implied preventative strategies that could lessen the frequency of intellectual disability/ MR in children.

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