PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTURBANCE AMONG 5 TO 8-YEAR OLD SCHOOL-CHILDREN - A STUDY FROM INDIA

This paper presents findings on the prevalence of psychological distur bance among a sample of 5- to 8-year-old Indian school children. The s tudy was cross-sectional with a two-instrument, two-phase design. In t he first phase (screening), 48 teachers rated 1535 children (810 boys and 725 girls) drawn from five schools in Bangalore city on the 26-ite m Children's Behaviour Questionnaire (CBQ). This resulted in 281 child ren being identified as disturbed, giving a prevalence of 18.3%. In th e second phase, 279 of the children identified as disturbed on the CBQ and a matched group of 272 'non-disturbed children' (182 boys and 90 girls) were again rated by teachers, this time using the Child Behavio ur Checklist - Teacher Report Form, yielding a corrected prevalence ra te of 19.8%. In the same phase, 166 of the disturbed children and a ma tched group of 169 non-disturbed children were rated by parents using the Child Behaviour Checklist, yielding a corrected prevalence rate of 31.7%. A larger proportion of boys than girls were identified as dist urbed by teachers, whereas parents identified a large proportion of di sturbed girls. Boys were found to manifest externalizing problems more often, while girls more frequently showed internalizing problems. Lea rning problems were identified in a substantial number of disturbed bo ys and girls.