Underweight and overweight cases among the mentally retarded

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The body mass index (BMI) was calculated at the age of 20 for all the 132 survivors (83%) out of the 159 mentally retarded individuals born in 1966 in Northern Finland. Reliable information was acquired for 112 cases (84.8%). The mean BMI for these cases did not deviate significantly from that for an average Finnish population at age 20-29 years. It was found that 41.5% of the slightly retarded cases (IQ 35-70) and 28.6% of the seriously retarded ones (IQ less than 35) were of ideal weight (BMI 20-24), while 9.8% of all the retarded individuals were moderately obese (BMI greater than 30) and 7.1% seriously so (BMI greater than or equal to 32). Ninety-one per cent of the seriously obese cases lived with their parents and did not participate in any occupational therapy or work. A total of 29.5% of the mentally retarded subjects were underweight (BMI less than 20), a condition which would seem to be above all a problem for seriously retarded individuals and an obvious consequence of the different feeding and dietary problems connected with their multiple disabilities.