Am J Psychiatry 1978; 135:345-349
Copyright © 1978 by American Psychiatric Association
The failure to detect low IQ in psychiatric assessment
TE Gift, JS Strauss and BA Ritzler
The authors assessed the IQs of 188 hospitalized psychiatric patients and
found that 27 (14.4%) had IQs of 85 or less. However, the psychiatric
records of 22 of the patients with low IQs showed that only 5 contained any
mention of level of intellectual functioning. These findings suggest that a
variable of major importance for diagnosis and treatment planning is often
ignored.
