PSYCHIC MINORS. - The term m. p. (or mentally abnormal) has a medico-pedagogical value and is in use in school medicine and in remedial pedagogy. Some authors prefer that of
"disharmonious" or "unfit" or "irregular." In any case, by such designations are meant those subjects (especially children and adolescents) who show an insufficiency in learning, because they have not reached the mental capacity proper to their age, or who cannot adapt their moral behavior to the requirements of common life. They are distinguished, therefore, into the mentally deficient in intelligence, or feeble-minded, or minor frenasthenics (v. FRENASTHENIA), and into the mentally deficient in character, or unstable, or affectively abnormal, who correspond to the milder forms of neurosis and of infantile psychosis. Mixed deficients, the most frequent, are instead those who are at the same time feeble-minded and unstable.
The producing causes can be biopathic, cerebropathic, mixed (true mentally abnormal); as also extrinsic to the nervous system, linked to frailty, exhausting illnesses, adenoidism, intoxications, moral abandonment, family conflicts, erroneous educational methods, etc. These are the false mentally abnormal, or defective normals, because they appear temporarily below the average level and with appropriate medico-pedagogical treatment can become normal.
Such a differentiation between "true" and "false" rests greatly on the practical results that are obtained; beforehand, it often presents no slight difficulties. And, on the other hand, such a classification and the presumption of the subject's adaptability is essential, so that the m. p. may be sent to the most suitable institution. Such a task is assigned to the "Medico-psychopedagogical Centers" where the psychiatrist, the psychologist, the pedagogue and the social workers collaborate. These centers, which are fundamentally the Italian interpretation of the American and English "Child guidance clinics," also concern themselves with prevention and treatment.
The problem of the social placement and the recovery of the m. p. has passed through phases of successive evolution and improvement: from indifference to institutionalization, from re-education to prevention. The first attempts were made ca. a century and a half ago in France and in Germany; in Italy, in 1848, the first institute for cretins was opened at Aosta. At first the problem interested only a few willing persons driven by charity or by philanthropy or by science; later the intervention of the State was added, but legislative provisions in support and regulation of private institutions are still scanty (cf., e.g., the royal decree of 5 Feb. 1928, no. 577). Among the most active in this field are to be remembered Tommasini, Gonnelli-Gioni, Bonfigli, and above all S. De Sanctis and Montesano.
The institutions that provide in Italy for the instruction and education of the m. p., recognized as socially adaptable, are: 1) the "differential classes" which function in the elementary schools and which serve for false abnormal children, not seriously retarded or nervous (Montesano), for whom school leveling and therefore the return, after some time, to the common school can be foreseen. Other characteristics of the differential classes are the limited number of pupils, specialized personnel, instruction by means of differentiated didactics, medical and psychological consultation, and social and moral assistance. 2) The
"special schools" or "autonomous schools" or "asylum-schools" for true m. p., autonomous in premises, in direction, in disciplinary, didactic and educational organization. These are para-scholastic institutions that aim at the social adaptation of the m. p. principally by means of work, organized in the form of day boarding schools, with a special timetable and calendar, which guarantees continuous assistance. In such autonomous schools too there exists a permanent medico-psycho-pedagogical collaboration, instruction imparted with a differentiated method, the correction of speech defects, corrective physical education, moral and social assistance; a preeminent importance is given to work — educational, pre-vocational and vocational-guidance work. The "autonomous school" thus realizes a type of open assistance. 3) The "residential medico-pedagogical institutes" provide for the boarding accommodation of m. p. deprived of a family or of those who must be removed from it, because it constitutes an environment unsuited to the development or the straightening of their character, or who reside in localities far from inhabited centers. Such institutes have the same organization as the autonomous schools, but affective education is more developed in them.
Institutions of accommodation with boarding, generally run by religious bodies, or the sections for minor frenasthenics of psychiatric hospitals, serve instead for the serious cases recognized as socially non-adaptable (or non-recoverable), called major frenasthenics, among whom are included those affected by glandular dystrophies and by serious psychopathies; individuals often in need only of purely physical assistance.
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Aldo Cacchione