Comorbid Psychiatric Illnesses in Developmental Dysphasia (Developmental Language Disorder)

Summary

Psychiatric diseases include some logopaedic diagnoses. To understand them, it is necessary to distinguish between speech, language and social communication, deficits of which are also indicators of other mental disorders. Disruption of language development results in developmental language disorder, increasingly known abroad under the abbreviation DLD, and in the Czech Republic under the term “developmental dysphasia”. This disorder belongs among neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), which are characterised by a strong genetic background, structural abnormalities in the brain, and a tendency to persist throughout life. Because common features of NDDs have a mutual overlap, DLD creates a comorbid connection with other NDDs. This review article draws attention to the persistently reduced quality of life in individuals with DLD, and thus to the seriously high prevalence of typical psychiatric diseases and social pathology within this group of people. At the same time, it analyses the main cause of this comorbid connection and looks for a common solution within the discussion. For this reason, the paper is intended for clinical speech-language pathologists and paediatric psychiatrists, so that they can apply new findings in clinical practice and jointly advocate a systemic solution – by changing their own approach and raising public awareness.

Keywords:

developmental dysphasia, developmental language disorder (DLD), paediatric psychiatry, neurodevelopmental disorders, social anxiety disorder, depression