Selective Mutism
Selective Mutism is a complex childhood anxiety disorder characterized by a child’s inability to speak and communicate effectively in select social settings, such as school. These children are able to speak and communicate in settings where they are comfortable, secure, and relaxed.
Cluster Number:
Wiki Number: PW200
Diagnosis: Selective Mutism
US Patients:
World Patients: .71 of 1% in 2002
Sex Ratio:
Age Onset: early childhood
Brain Area: amygdalas may become over-excited and this is a fight-flight response;
Symptoms: anxiety where people cannot speak in specific situations or places or to specific persons along with a social anxiety disorder.
Progression: Gets worse with age, contributing to depression, further anxiety and other social and emotional problems
Causes: some have experienced trauma; others, not
Medications: An SSRI, fluoxetine, has helped some children.
Therapies: Only change schools if the new one will be more supportive. Different techniques are described in the Wikipedia article.
4 CURRENT ARTICLES
FROM PUBMED
The world-wide medical research
reports chosen for each diagnosis
Clicking each title opens the
PubMed article’s summary-abstract.
- Posterior fossa syndrome in a population of children and young adults with medulloblastoma: a retrospective, multicenter Italian study on incidence and pathophysiology in a histologically homogeneous and consecutive series of 136 patientsby Camilla de Laurentis on June 29, 2022
CONCLUSIONS: This study confirmed some factors known to be associated with PFS onset and shed light on other debated issues. Our findings enhance an already hypothesized role of cerebellar language lateralization. The analysis of a population of young adults may shed more light on the often-neglected existence of PFS in non-pediatric patients.
- Genetic prion diseases presenting as frontotemporal dementia: clinical features and diagnostic challengeby Zhongyun Chen on June 29, 2022
CONCLUSIONS: GPrDs presenting with FTD are characterized by early-onset, high incidence of positive family history, high frequency of the Val allele at codon 129, overlapping symptoms with prion disease and FTD, and ancillary features closer to FTD. PRNP mutations may be a rare cause in the FTD spectrum, and PRNP genotyping should be considered in patients with these features.
- Left-handedness should not be overrated as a risk factor for postoperative speech impairment in children after posterior fossa tumour surgery: a prospective European multicentre studyby Jonathan Kjær Grønbæk on June 27, 2022
CONCLUSION: We found no difference in the risk of POSI associated with handedness. Our data do not support the hypothesis that handedness should be of clinical relevance in the risk assessment of CMS.
- The Validation of the Selective Mutism Questionnaire for Use in the Dutch Populationby Chaya Rodrigues Pereira on June 27, 2022
Selective mutism (SM) is an anxiety disorder in children/adolescents, characterized by the absence of speaking in specific social situations, mostly at school. The selective mutism questionnaire (SMQ) is a parent report, internationally used to assess SM symptomatology and treatment outcomes. Since no assessment instrument for SM was available in the Netherlands, our aim was to investigate the psychometric properties of the Dutch translation of the SMQ, through reliability, confirmatory factor,...