Children with complex medical issues in schools

Аннотация

In the course of training in pediatric neuropsychology, clinicians and stu­dents need to be familiar with a range of disorders and their phenotypes. All too often, the focus is on the high incidence disorders, such as learning disabilities and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, rather than on the multitude of other conditions that can affect children’s educational and social-emotional functioning. A neuropsychological approach to assess­ment and case conceptualization incorporates information from various behavioral domains believed to be related to functional neurological sys­tems. The major premise of neuropsychological ssessment is that differ­ent behaviors involve the interaction of differing neurological structures or functional systems with subsequent inferences drawn about brain in­tegrity based on performance across a variety of specialized assessment tasks. The case studies included in this text provide examples of both the variability and similarities in the ways medical conditions, some of which do not have obvious neurological underpinnings (like endocrine disor­ders, diabetes) as well as those that more emphatically involve the central nervous systems (e.g., seizure disorder, encephalitis, meningitis) can affect day-to-day functioning in the crucial developmental period of life.