Childhood Disintegrative Disorder: Clinical Features and Diagnostic Criteria Waleed Ahmad Published online by MRCPsych UK: Tuesday, 03 May 2022 Introduction There is a loss of skills in several areas of development and deficits in social, communicative, and behavioural functioning that follow normal development in this condition. Often the condition follows a prodromic period during which children develop obscure symptoms; they become restive, irritable, anxious, and overactive. Impoverishment follows this and then loss of speech and language, accompanied by behavioural disintegration. Sometimes the loss of skills is persistently progressive (especially if there is an underlying progressive neurological condition), but more often, the decline over some months and then a slight improvement. The prognosis is usually abysmal, and it leaves most individuals with severe intellectual disability. There is uncertainty about the extent to which this condition differs from autism. Sometimes, th...