Diagnoses of specific learning disorders (SLD) for children and young people in primary and secondary schools have been constantly and progressively increasing for over 10 years. The number of students with SLD – according to the latest data from the Ministry of Education published in 2022 – went from 0.9% in the 2010/2011 school year (the year of the law on the subject) to 5.4% in 2020/2021. “These data highlight growth but it would be a mistake to talk about an ‘explosive’ or ‘out of control’ phenomenon. There is certainly more attention but there is also a lot that is still hidden”, explains Deny Menghini, head of Psychology at the Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry at the Bambino Gesù hospital in Rome, to Adnkronos Salute.
Let’s start with the size of the problem, suggests Menghini. “In Italy there are no real epidemiological data. But we have an important scientific literature work – published a few years ago in Plos one by a group of researchers from several Italian universities – which reported an analysis on 11,000 children. Evaluating only the presence of dyslexia, among children aged 8 to 10, we arrived at a percentage of 3.5%. The 2021 data, the latest available, based on the certificates that are delivered to the school and registered, tell us that with respect to dyslexia the certification provided is 2.8%. We are therefore still well below the percentage of ‘expected’ diagnoses. While it is true that the detection and the percentage of children who present the certification to the school have increased, we do not have, overall, a complete detection of children who have this disorder”.
Furthermore, “the only data in the literature concern only dyslexia, only reading disorder. We know nothing about the prevalence of writing or calculation disorders in Italy”. It is also difficult and not very useful to use international data. “For example, we cannot say how many children with dyslexia there are in the world because it is a language-dependent problem”. From the point of view of the request for certification, however, “there is certainly a general perception of an increase in diagnoses which does not mean, I repeat, that the problem is growing”.
With respect to the growth trend of certifications, it is important to remember that, adds Menghini, “before 2010 in Italy we did not have specific legislation on learning disabilities, we only had ministerial circulars. Certifications were very rarely presented. There was a partial response to requests from parents and schools, dispensatory measures and compensatory tools could not be applied. Subsequently, and steadily, the request for evaluation increased, but the data, although partial, still tell us that the percentages are not exaggerated”.
However, the territorial heterogeneity must be highlighted. “We have, as in many other areas, a patchy situation. The percentage of diagnoses that schools receive, goes – depending on the Region – from 1% to 9%”, he points out.
In any case, today we see “certainly more attention to this type of disorder, from elementary school to university. The MIUR data also indicate a higher number of certifications in secondary school compared to primary school. This means that when we should notice the problem, we do not do so in time. We do it late. This is an important element for reflection”, he concludes.
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