Conduct Disorder: The seeds of crime

Sarath Sundar, MA (Psy), MPhil (M&SP)

Clinical Psychologist and Hypnotherapist
Reg. No: RCI-CRR-A29650
Govt. District Hospital, Palakkad
Phone: 9745604193
www.psychologistkerala.net

Children and their character formations, including education, are always an

anxious concern for the sensible parents. Sending children to the top ranked schools
and admitting to the success guaranteed syllabus, despite the financial difficulties,
are the key indicators that how important the children are for their parents. Parents
are ready to take their children to anybody who claims that they can fix every
prolems of their children from faith/magical healers to professional/scientific
healers. In this prolonged fight for upbringing kids to the evershining success, most
parents are likely to face many threatening hindrance from health to wealth.
Conduct disorder is such a difficult condition that definitely impede the strategies
and struggles of the parents in making their kids a successful being.

Yes as the term indicates, conduct disorder includes a set of behavioral and
emotional problems often begins during childhood. These children and teenagers
with conduct disorder most often found as having lower fear level. They appears
highly tended to disobey rules and behaving in a socially unacceptable way. They
may express aggressive, destructive, and deceitful behaviors that results in the
violation of the rights of others. Parents and adults may consider these behavior
issues as “bad” or delinquent, rather than as having a psychological or psychiatric
illness.

Case vignette: John, 12 year old boy, whose parents are well educated and employed,
is first among two brothers. He is six years elder to his brother and frequently engages in
fight with his brother. He often yell out that he doesn’t like his brother and he lost every
pleasure after this brother born. For about last four to five years he is highly hostile to his
parents especially to his mother as she is the person who interferes and tries to correct him.
He never likes his mother giving advices and remains like that he is correct and others are at
fault. He never accepts the mistakes he does rather blame others that it is other’s mistake. He
started showing a bad decline in studies since his fourth standard and teachers started to
complain about him for his fights and adjustment problems with his classmates. His class
teacher also warned his parents that he is found somewhere outside school premise wandering
with some boys elder to him. Following to this mother started to observe him and found that
he smokes and sometime gets a smell of liquor. He became less fearful and quite negligent
about others. Similarly his arguements and quarrels with mother started increasing and
shown no concern for his father. Beside all these, one day his mother got a phone call from
nearby police station informing that he is caught by shadow police officers for roaming in
street on school time with some elder group of boys who all are having some notorious
history. By knowing his nature at home and school, police officers suspected a conduct
disorder in him and adviced parents to take him to a clinical psychologist.

Symptoms of Conduct Disorder

Based on age and the severity of the illness, the symptoms of conduct
disorder do vary. If your child is persistently displaying one or more of the
following behaviors, he/she may have conduct disorder.
 Aggressive behavior: behaviors that threaten or cause physical harm include
fighting, bullying, cruel to others or animals, using weapons, and forcing another
into sexual activity.
 Destructive behavior: involves intentional destruction of property such as arson
(deliberate fire-setting) and vandalism (harming another person's property).
 Deceitful behavior: include repeated lying, shoplifting, or stealing.
 Violation of rules
Along with this, most children with conduct disorder are irritable, have low self-
esteem, and throws temper tantrums. Some may use illicit drugs and alcohol. They are
unable to sense how their behavior can hurt others and generally have little guilt or
remorse. These behaviors are often referred to as antisocial behaviors and is often
seen as the precursor to antisocial personality disorder, which is not diagnosed until
the individual is 18 years old.

What causes??
The exact cause is still unknown, but the research findings do supports the
role of both biological and environmental factors contribute to the development of
conduct disorder. When we focus on the family of majority of children with conduct
disorder, we can find some or other forms of pathological family dynamics such as
parental disputes, alcohol or other drug abuse in family, a dysfunctional family
setting, child abuse etc.

Treatment
Treating conduct disorder is many a times a difficult task as the drop out rate
is very high and the poor support system and pathological family dynamics often
creates a block in the course of interventions. Many factors such as the age of the
child, the symptom severity, child’s cooperation etc are to taken into account to
initiake any kind of treatment for conduct disorder. The combination of
Psychotherapy including Behavior therapy and medication is often considered as the
best method of treating conduct disorder like any other mental health problems.