Western research suggests that life events contribute to childhood psychiatric disorder but no studies have examined this in developing countries. During a population-based study of 1,403 8-12 year old children in Kerala, South India, a life events schedule was administered to parents of children with ICD10 psychiatric disorders (n = 72) and controls. Life events were associated with lower social class, greater poverty, less educated parents, worse physical health and psychiatric disorder. Multivariate analysis confirmed the association of life events with psychiatric disorder, independent of indices of social adversity.

A random sample of 1192 children aged 8–12 years living in Calicut District, Kerala, South India, underwent testing with the Malayalam Graded Reading Test as part of an epidemiological study of neuropsychiatric disorders. The prevalence of reading difficulty was 8.2% and it was associated with younger age, male sex, poverty, less‐educated parents, psychiatric disturbance, school failure, poor school attendance, physical ill‐health, poor motor co‐ordination and impaired vocabulary and visuo‐spatial reasoning. The findings support a multifactorial causal model of reading difficulties in this child population.

Age was the major association of motor incoordination indicating the importance of maturation. Behaviour, vocabulary, visuospatial reasoning, material deprivation, perinatal complications, chronic physical symptoms and occupational status of the father were also independently associated with motor co-ordination. Using sibling pairs, evidence of familial aggregation of motor co-ordination was found.