Cognitive skills in Japanese Encephalitis and Non-Japanese Encephalitis children of North East Uttar Pradesh: A comparative study

Pages: 1142-1145
Sadhna and Anupam Nath Tripathi (Department of Psychology, D.D.U. Gorakhpur University, Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh)
Ashok Kumar Patel (Clinical Psychologist, Mental Health Unit District Hospital, Balrampur, Uttar Pradesh)

Japanese encephalitis (JE) is the most prevalent form of viral encephalitis endemic to many parts of Asia where periodic outbreaks take hundreds of lives. It is caused by the JE virus (JEV), belonging to the family Flaviviridae. It is basically children’s health problem. JE mostly affects children. Majority of adults in endemic areas have developed immunity to JE due to sub-clinical infection or clinical infection during childhood. Aim of this study was to comparison of functions of children with JE and normal control in Bender Gestalt test. 80 children (40 Japanese Encephalitis affected children & 40 normal children) were included in this research. The result showed the clinical group has higher number of error in Bender gestalt test than the non-clinical group. This result can be explained in term of several mechanism visual perception visuomotor deficit attention, executive function impairment (response inhibition & decision making) and cognitive impulsivity. Other possible reason for this difference in these two groups is neuro-psychological alteration prior to drug use /high grad fever and existence of neuro-psychological impairments that are that are produced a result of JE virous.