PROBLEM CHILDREN GROWING UP
Leo Kanner M. D.1
1 Baltimore, Md.
A brief résumé of a follow-up study of 75 problem children is presented after the first interval of between four and six years. The present mode of adjustment is reviewed in its relations to health, intelligence, home and school conditions, family coöperation, the rôle of unpredictable contingencies and the complaints with which the patients had been first brought to the clinic. The need for brevity has precluded detailed accounts of individual cases which, however, are drawn on succinctly to serve as illustrations. There is hope for continuation of the follow-up of these and other patients for at least the coming decade. Studies of this nature may help to throw light on prognostic expectations, furnish empirical data about actual developments and their determinants, intrench respect for relativistic pluralism in the investigation of human behavior and show the way to the improvement of existing imperfections of psychiatric therapy and communal resources in dealing with problem children.
