Services of Clinical Psychologist

The concept of mental retardation engulfs many factors, such as social, behavioral, developmental, etiological, neuropathological, and prognostic implications. The presence of all these factors may not be necessary and often one or two factors are sufficient enough to manifest mental retardation.

The essential features are:  1] significantly sub average intellectual functioning. 2] Resulting in or associated with deficit or impairment in adoptive behavior. 3] With the onset before the age of 18 years of age.

Due to these limitations, a mentally retarded child learns and develops at a slower pace than the normal child. We may classify mental retardation in two ways:

1] I.Q. based classification

2] Education based classification

On the basis of both these methods and DSM-IV TR diagnostic criteria, we make assessment of our
students.

Work Areas:

1] Behavioral assessment and management:

We do assess skills of every student in terms of its level and independence. In case of behavioral problems behavior modification techniques are used.

2] Parent Training and Counseling:

Parent counseling is the integral part of this work which is done on one to one basis and as a group therapy also. Parent counseling is done for both; with parents and individual. This is to help them cope up with the stress they go through while parenting a mentally challenged child. This stress could be because of some family problems or could be because of the problems at their work place. In certain critical cases, we have to make home visit of clinical psychologist. We do arrange parent training sessions. In this, we try to give hands on training to parents in respect of their child.

We all know that individual psychology plays a very important role in our life. Parents are guided to adopt positive approach in case of their mentally challenged child. A Clinical Psychologist helps parents to identify strong and positive points of their ward and to capitalize this for their rehabilitation.