Postnatal Causes of Learning Disability (Intellectual Disability)
Postnatal causes of learning or intellectual disability include head injury, infections, neurodegeneration, and toxicities. A study on the causes of developmental disability found bacterial meningitis, child battering, vehicle-related injuries, and otitis media as the most common causes. However, a developmental disability is a broader term that can include motor developmental disabilities too. The results still give us an idea as this overlap heavily with causes of pure intellectual disability. See Table 1.
Table 1: Most Common Causes of Developmental Disability |
|
Bacterial
meningitis |
31% |
Child
battering |
15% |
Motor-vehicle-
related injuries |
11% |
Otitis
media |
11% |
Postnatal causes of developmental
disabilities in children aged 3-10 years -- Atlanta, Georgia, 1991. MMWR Morb
Mortal Wkly Rep 1996 Feb 16 45 130134 |
Head injury
- Traumatic (accidental) brain injury; one of the most preventable causes of intellectual disabilities.
- The shaken baby syndrome is the most common cause of non-accidental head injury that affects developing brains.
- They classify postnatal hypoxia as a perinatal cause if this occurs immediately following birth. However, if it occurs later, we may classify it as another postnatal cause of intellectual disability.
Infections
- Meningitis, especially bacterial meningitis, is one of the most common causes of intellectual disability.
- Encephalitis, that might be viral can also cause intellectual disability. At a later age, the international classification of disease categories the sequelae of encephalitis under organic mental conditions as a postencephalitic syndrome.