Description:
Selective mutism (SM), a rather rare and hidden phenomena, is often misunderstood as extreme shyness. Despite a relatively early onset of SM, affected children are often only referred to specific treatment at late elementary school age. This is a result of the challenge SM poses to teachers who are often not well enough informed about SM. In addition, adequate tools to identify SM are still lacking. This study presents a survey conducted with elementary and special needs school teachers in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The aim was to identify pupils already diagnosed with SM and pupils suspected having SM. In 207 of a total of 7917 children (2.6%), symptoms of SM occurred during school time were reported by the teachers. This exceeds previous prevalence rates and so confirms the assumption of a high number of unreported cases. Within the sample of children revealing SM symptoms proportion of multilingual children is very high (40.6%) and may reflect an elevated vulnerability of these children for the development of SM.