After a ten-year period, 40 mildly mentally retarded adults, who had been hospitalized as adolescents for brief treatment of psychiatric disorders, were contacted and interviewed as to their current overall social and vocational adjustment. Similar cohorts with mild mental retardation, but no psychiatric disorders, have been reported to have favorable outcomes in the majority of cases; and nonretarded psychiatric cohorts generally have such outcomes to a slightly lesser degree. Only 30 percent of the current sample, however, could be judged as having a favorable adult outcome. Implications of this dual diagnostic status were discussed.
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