The problem of juvenile psychosis has only in recent years become a serious concern of the practicing physician. In the past, even psychiatrists neglected the juvenile psychoses on the prevailing assumption that definite mental abnormalities developed only during the postadolescent and adult years. During recent years, however, intensive studies of children with severe and persistent behavioral and personality changes have shown that a large number of the psychotic conditions which are first diagnosed during the postadolescent and adult years in reality originate during childhood. The conditions of many children are erroneously diagnosed as simple behavior problems, and their psychotic conditions are overlooked.
The majority of juvenile psychotic subjects have schizophrenia, but the symptoms are usually different from those of schizophrenia in an adult. This is due essentially to their intellectual, emotional and experiential immaturity. Juvenile psychotic patients rarely have well defined delusions, probably because they have not as yet acquired