Public health checkups are conducted on 3-year-old children in Japan. However, it is often difficult to detect or provide ongoing support to children with developmental disorders without MR. Therefore we have conducted health checkups on 5 year olds.

The objectives are to describe the results and follow-up of health checkups in 5-year-old children and examine the utility of such checkups.

The aims are to make clear the utility of health checkups in 5-year-old children for screening for developmental disorders.

The subjects were 303 children of 5-year-old that lived in Kanie-cho and participated in health checkups. in the checkups, a child psychiatrist examined the children, and made a provisional diagnosis of a developmental disorder.

Eighty-two children were provisionally diagnosed as having developmental disorders. the follow-up allowed final diagnosis of developmental disorders (suspect diagnosis included) to be made in 39 children (12.9%), and pinpointed 19 children with ADHD, 9 children with PDD, 9 children with mild MR, and 2 children with motor skills disorder.

All children with PDD had already been informed about the possible occurrence of developmental disorders at 3 years of age. However, most of ADHD, mild MR, and motor function disorder were diagnosed in these children during the checkups at the age of 5 years.

The health checkup in 5-year-old children is useful not only as a tool to detect developmental disorders that are difficult to diagnose at the age of 3 years but also as an approach in patients lost to follow-up.