EPA-0785 – Dealing with unknown etiology cerebral palsy: Case report

Abstract

Introduction:Cerebral palsy refers to a wide range of motor abnormalities which result from damage to the developing or immature brain. Parents of children with developmental disabilities experience heightened stress, impaired mental health, sense of devaluation and self-blame, frequently causing conflicts on the couple subsystem.Objectives:This paper aims to describe psychiatric and psychosocial maladjustment caused by this emotional and physically demanding pathology.Methods:We describe a 8-year-old boy who developed hetero aggressivity admitted to our outpatient clinic.Results:His mother refers alert signs since patient's neonatal period, with axial hypotonia and global psychomotor development retardation. He also presented absence seizures, several congenital malformations that led to urological, otorrinolaringological and stomatological surgeries. While performing mental state evaluation we could clinically assess ADHD, as well as marked language difficulties, which made us consider introduction of psycho-stimulants, besides mood stabilizers prescribed by his neurologist, after excluding cardiaovascular abnormalities. During the various appointments serious problems were found within family relationships, specially father's difficulty in accepting his youngest son disability, which made us intervene holistically, supporting and validating patient's mother and brother work and efforts and psychoeducating his father in order to improve his psychosocial emotional development.Conclusions:Psycho-social programs and coping strategies should be developed to respond to individual changing needs and to provide necessary support for the special needs of these families.