In the case of SpLD, the child's problem area, which is reflected in the KINDL(R) dimension of everyday functioning in school, seems to be an issue of controversial value that may be differentially perceived by children and their mothers. Further, it can be argued that as mothers seemed to perceive in a more negative way the child's QoL at school, they were at the same time attempting to counterbalance their reactions by overestimating the child's physical and emotional well-being. Besides differences, there is a tendency even low for mothers and children with SpLD to converge toward similar perceptions regarding the child's physical and emotional well-being and satisfaction with friends that is showing some rather common understanding of the child's overall well-being and his/her relationships with peers. In the control group, agreement between children and parents seems to be more even and evident. Proxy assessments in children with SpLD and their parents may be useful for planning targeted support interventions for these families.

Background: The literature review shows that treatment compliance in child psychiatric practice is a multifactorial issue that includes parameters such as the type of problem presented by the child, the family’s functioning and the therapeutic team’s organization and functioning. Methods: In order to examine these parameters and their inter-relationship, epidemiological data from the files of 455 cases, representing the total number of cases admitted to our Centre between 1990–1994, were collected. We noted that the majority of patients (58.6%) failed to comply with treatment. Results: The statistical analysis shows that the sex and age of the child, the socio-economic status of the family, the family’s size, the parents’ educational background as well as the referral source are unrelated to compliance. On the contrary, the type of problem presented by the child, the type of recommended treatment, the number of sessions attended and the season of admission are correlated with treatment compliance. Conclusions: Certain aspects of our team’s techniques concerning the admission procedure, therapeutic contract and parental counselling have been re-examined and improved.

This study investigates the WISC-III profile in Greek children with learning disabilities (LD). The sample consisted of 180 children diagnosed with learning disability (136 boys, 44 girls) aged 6.11 to 14.4 years. The Mean Full-scale IQ is 96.08, Mean Verbal IQ is 96.38, and Mean Performance IQ is 96.61. On individual subtests, the lowest mean scores are for Digit Span and Arithmetic whereas the highest are for Similarities and Picture Completion. Forty eight percent of our sample has a higher Verbal Intelligence, while 46.7% has a higher Performance Intelligence. These results indicate that the WISC-III profile in Greek-speaking children with LD is similar to that shown by an English-speaking sample with respect to the most difficult subtests. This finding implies that despite linguistic differences between the Greek and English languages, deficits in short term memory and working memory are responsible for the emergence of learning disabilities in both languages.

Adolescence is a complex biopsychosocial phenomenon. All the inner-subjective changes in adolescents take place within the context of a specific social environment, which offers the necessary ideological setting that adolescents must confront in the course of their identity formation. Forced migration creates conditions under which the adolescent Ego may be traumatized more easily, resulting in the development of defensive mechanisms, which may interfere with the natural process of identity formation. The aim of this paper is to investigate how a traumatic situation such as forced migration may affect the mechanisms of identity formation in adolescence. For this purpose, clinical material, consisting of two cases of psychoanalytical psychotherapy of adolescents who were forced to immigrate to Greece, is presented and discussed in a psychoanalytical theoretical framework, along with the historical-sociological background.

Background: Compliance in therapy appears to be linked to the process of therapeutic alliance. A positive patient–therapist relationship usually leads to successful completion of therapy. The aim of this study was to compare evidence, collected at two time periods in a Community Mental Health Center in Athens, on factors affecting treatment compliance. The hypothesis was that by modifying the therapeutic team’s functioning, noncompliance could be reduced. Methods: Epidemiological data were collected from child and adolescent out-patient files at two time periods: time period A, 1990–1994, n = 455 (sample A) and time period B, 2000–2002, n = 476 (sample B). Variables pertaining to the patient, his family and recommended treatment were examined. Student’s t test and the Pearson χ² test were used in order to explore the correlation of the variables with treatment completion in each sample. Logistic regression analyses were used to determine whether the effect of each variable on treatment completion differed between the two samples. Results: In sample A, most patients (58.6%) did not comply with therapy. The type of recommended treatment, the number of sessions, season of admission and the type of presented problem were found to correlate with treatment completion. Between the two time periods, certain modifications were implemented in the team’s functioning (less diagnostic sessions, focused psychotherapy techniques, less time interval between referral and first diagnostic appointment). A significant reduction in the early termination rate (45.7%) was noted in sample B. The type of recommended treatment, the number of sessions, the family’s situation, the mother’s educational level and the patient’s gender were related to treatment completion in sample B. The effect of the type of proposed treatment and the mean number of sessions of the completed treatments differed significantly between the two samples. Conclusions:Early termination rates in therapy decreased between two time periods. This decrease may be attributed to modifications in the team’s functioning, aimed at improving the therapeutic relationship. The limitation of this study is that only those factors pertaining to the service’s organization and functioning were investigated.