Conduct disorder is often comorbid with other problems such as depression and substance abuse. These problems can complicate the treatment of an adolescent with delinquent behavior. Due to the severity and duration of the individual’s behavior, it is difficult and sometimes has unsuccessful treatment process. My opinion is that having other factors contribute to the difficulty of the treatment of this disorder, like depression and substance abuse, can negatively impact the patient and challenge the therapist.
Most outsiders would think that an adolescent displaying a delinquent behavior is just demonstrating rebellion against authority; that there isn’t any true reason for one to commit a crime. Looking deeper though at why an individual
…show more content…
would act upon their emotions and behaviors there is evidence of true factors. The Casebook in Child Behavior Disorder defines conduct disorder as, a “type of disorder that is a repetitive and persistent pattern of behavior in an individual in which the rights of others or basic social rules are violated.”(Kearney, The Casebook in Child Behavior Disorder) One will exhibit these behaviors in a different environment and is caused by influencing factors such as, their genetics and environments. Aggressive, destructive, deceitful, and violation behavior are the symptoms of conduct disorder. Derek showed all of these symptoms. Knowing a client’s age and severity of his disorders the therapist can clearly distinguish one’s behavioral symptoms. With having a clear look on his or her symptoms, age, and severity of the disorder one can could come up with a good intervention and treatment plan. What most individuals don’t understand is that treatment for conduct disorder is a long and difficult process.
Many think that all that has to be done to cure a delinquent behavior in an adolescent is to have stricter rules to constrain them. The purpose of treatment for conduct disorder is to prevent further delinquency behavior. In order to come up with a treatment plan, a therapist must know what events or emotions triggered the conduct disorder and the individual’s interaction with their different environments. When treating conduct disorder the process consists of practicing psychotherapy and medication. Derek’s therapist put him through cognitive-behavioral therapy, which tries to improve problem solving skills, anger management, moral reasoning skills, and impulse control. Family therapy may also help with an individual’s disorder so one can gather the family’s feelings and teach them how to help their child. If one is not treated quickly and effectively for conduct disorder he or she may be at risk for developing other mental …show more content…
disorders. In this case study, Derek had negative, depression symptoms.
The psychologist noticed that there was a link between his mood and behavior, especially how negative his thoughts sometimes led to reckless and impulsive behavior. Without the psychologist involving Derek in social-cognitive techniques his treatment wouldn’t be successful. He would still have a negative outlook on himself and interactions with others. The medication that the therapist would prescribed to Derek for his depression is an antidepressant. It has been proven that antidepressants may increase suicidal thoughts, so not only with taking medication for this disorder to help manage the depressive behavior it might heighten the suicidal thoughts that will hurt the treatment processes. This mental illness will affect how the treatment process will work and how effective it will
be. Many individuals diagnosed with a conduct disorder are often associated with substance abuse. Males have a higher rate of being involved in substance abuse compared to females. Drugs can cause abusers to experience one or more symptoms of another mental illness. Both drug use and mental disorders are caused by overlapping factors such as, brain deficits, genetic vulnerabilities, and/or exposure to stress or trauma. Derek was involved in drugs which, drug use increases arousal that effects conduct disorder. It is not only hard to try to get a control over conduct disorder, but if there is drug addiction, that will be another set of treatment that an individual will have to endure. If a client has a problem with drugs, the therapist will have to try not to include any forms of drugs with the treatment process due to the difficulties of gaining control over a disorder and the possibility of getting further addicted to other drugs. Reviewing features such as: age, environment, gender, and genetics, help to give a clear outlook on how to effectively treat a patient. Depression and substance abuse can complicate the treatment of conduct disorder because the factors and symptoms combine with these disorder. It will take longer and more therapy for a client if he or she has developed one of these comorbid factors of conduct disorder. Treatment for conduct disorder is sometimes unsuccessful, so having depression or substance abuse will make treatment more stressful and the likely hood for gaining control over the disorder is nonexistence.
In the book, Samenow strongly emphasizes that children become delinquent by choice. The theory of choice holds that youths will engage in delinquent and criminal behavior after weighing the consequences and benefits of their actions. Delinquent behavior is a rational choice made by a motivated offender who perceives that the chances of gain outweigh any possible punishment or loss. (Siegel & Welsh, 2011)
The hallmark of Conduct Disorder (CD) is an obvious and careless apathy for the rules, the rights, the emotions, and the personal territory of others. Aggression, deceitfulness, duress, and power over others are enjoyable to a child with CD. Children with CD pick fights, trespass, lie, cheat, steal, vandalize, display abusive behaviors, and, for older children, perpetrate unwanted sexual advances. The display of signs in younger children can be: ruthless bullying, lying for the purpose of lying, and stealing of useless things.
Conduct Disorder (CD) appears to be linked with substance abuse disorders (SUD) among adolescents when compared to other mental disorders within this population. There is a strong correlation between childhood diagnosis of CD because of environmental and genetic factors and is more common among boys than girls when there is a positive parental history of SUD. Pagliaro & Pagliaro (2012) have indicated that a dual diagnosis involving CD may be mediated among adolescents with childhood A-D/HD by the factor of deviant peer affiliation and co-morbidity of CD or of ODD is at an increased risk for developing a peer-mediated SUD during adolescence.
According to the DSM-IV, if a child's problem behaviors do not meet the criteria for Conduct Disorder, but involve a pattern of defiant, angry, antagonistic, hostile, irritable, or vindictive behavior, Oppositional Defiant Disorder may be diagnosed. These children may blame others for their problems.
Vitelli, R. (1996). Prevalence of childhood conduct and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorders in adult maximum-security inmates. International Journal of Offender Therapy & Comparative Criminology, 40, 263 – 271
Conduct Disorder has been a part of the American Psychological Association’s Diagnostic Statistical Manuel (DSM) since its original release date in 1994. Although, there is new information about the disorder that was previously unknown, Conduct Disorder is distinguished by a “repetitive and persistent pattern of behavior in which the basic rights of others or major age-appropriate norms or rules are violated” (American Psychiatric Association, 1994.) This mild, moderate, or severe antisocial behavior begins to appear either in childhood, categorized as early-onset conduct disorder , or in adolescence after ten years of age, classified as adolescent-onset conduct disorder (Passamonti et al., 2010.) The criteria to meet to be diagnosed with this disorder are separated into four subgroups: aggressive conduct, nonaggressive conduct, deceitfulness or theft, and serious violations of the rules. Three or more incidents must be present in the past twelve months with at least one of the characteristics being present in the past six months. This disorder causes severe impairment of functioning across a variety of situations so it is important to keep in mind society and individual situations because this diagnosis may be “misapplied to individuals in settings where patterns of undesirable behavior are sometimes viewed as protective” (American Psychiatric Association, 1994.) For example, a patient that has recently relocated from a war torn country would most likely not be a candidate for Conduct disorder even though he or she may exhibit some of the characteristics.
Youths who have entered the justice system have often been diagnosed with mental disorders or diseases. “A majority of adolescents formally involved in juvenile court have at least one, if not more than one, significant emotional or learning impairment, or maltreatment experience” (Mallet, 2013). The existence of these diseases often effect the juvenile’s stability and ability to make rational decisions. Which may result in them engaging in criminal activities The prevalence of disruptive behavior disorders among youths in juvenile justice systems is reported to be between 30 percent and 50 percent (The mental health needs of juvenile offenders). The difficulties of these disorders are often
Wright, S., & Farrell, A. D. (2012). A qualitative study of individual and peer factors related to effective nonviolent versus aggressive responses to problem situations among adolescents and high incidence disabilities. Behavioral Disorders, 37(3), 163-178.
Mr. Davis is currently 23 years old and has had a budding conduct disorder prior to the age of 15 years old. Mr. Davis’s behavioral issues began at the young age of 9 years old. At that time, Mr. Davis was truant from school and stealing items from neighbors and relatives to sell. He also got into multiple fights. By the age of 12, Mr. Davis’ crimes became more severe and by the age of 15, he was charged with auto theft. For a diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder, the presence of a conduct disorder had to be established prior to the age of 15. As outlined above, Mr. Davis’ actions prior to 15 years of age meet the DSM-5 criteria for the conduct disorder.
Juvenile delinquency is a problem in society. The number of crimes committed by juveniles has gone down in the past 20 years, but it is still considered a big issue. It is believed by some people that a criminal starts young and any kid who commits crimes will grow up to be a criminal, but crimes among juveniles usually don't last for long. Most juveniles who commit crimes or status offenses, things that are only illegal because they are under the age of 18, are only Adolescent-Limited Offenders that grow out of it and become well-rounded adults. The ones who are in real trouble are the ones that keep on committing crimes even when they become adults or what is called Life-Course Persistent Offenders.
Most humans tend to live by example and studies prove that our behavior is learned, but how do we explained the bad behavior of those that have good parents that are excellent role models. Some people would said that the parents are too flexible and the kids take advantage of them in the other hand when parents neglect the kids and are bad role models for their kids we easily find the answer to the problem. As a society we contradict ourselves for example; sometimes we tell parents to not be too flexible with our kids but at the same time we do not want parents to discipline their children too harsh. The question of why juveniles commit crime does not have an exact answer. Some juveniles commit crime because of peer pressure, anger against life, and others might be just do it for fun. Even though the question does not have a conquer answer to why juveniles commit crime we know that different factors contribute to the issue. In the book True Notebooks Mark the author did not only explain his personal experience as a volunteer teacher at the juvenile hall, but also what he learned from his students and how his perspective change regarding the juveniles as he spend more time with them. Mark also discover that even though he was not aware of it he was making a positive change on some of them and the fact that he was willing to teach them a writing class meant so much for some of the students, and most important Mark present on the book the different reasons juveniles commit crime.
Conduct disorder is an inability to follow rules and behave in a socially acceptable way. People with this disorder exhibit aggression towards people and animals, are destructive towards property, are deceitful and seriously violate rules set by authority figures(3). Moreover, there are usually problems in the home such as divorce, poverty, child abuse, neglect, or parents that carry their own psychiatric diagnoses. In addition, patients with the disorder often carry other diagnoses such as oppositional defiant disorder, mood disorders, anxiety, attentio...
Conventional practice has long associated early preventive measures with positive delinquency reduction results. In particular, timely recognition of at-risk youth and correction of ineffective or minimally effective parenting techniques are critical to the prevention of future delinquency (Lundman, 1993). Numerous risk factors have been identified as indicators or predictors of juvenile delinquency and those factors represent dysfunction at several levels, specifically within the structure of the offender’s family. Some of these factors include conflict within the family, a lack of adequate supervision and/or rules, a distinct lack of parent-child attachment, instability, poor home life quality, parental expectations, out-of-home placements and inconsistent discipline (Shumaker, 1997). Social service professionals who frequently come into contact with children must be especially vigilant in order to detect the presence of any of the possibly contributory conditions mentioned above and to refer families to appropriate sources of assistance as early as possible.
Attempting to explain what causes a juvenile to become delinquent with pin point accuracy is like trying to nail Jell-O to a tree; it cannot be done. However, there is a plethora of theories that attempt to explain the correlation between delinquent behavior committed by a juvenile and the experiences that brought him/her to that moment. For this reason, narrowing down the vast amounts of explanations can become quite challenging. Consequently, for this observation, the focus will center on the conflict theory, the culture conflict theory, and the cultural transmission theory as an attempt to clarify the connection between the two variables; juveniles and the delinquent behaviors that they exhibit.
Juvenile delinquency is one of the major social issues in the United States today. Juvenile delinquency, also known as juvenile offending, is when “a violation of the law committed by a juvenile and not punishable by death or life imprisonment” (Merriam-webster.com). Although we have one justice system in America, the juvenile system differs from the adult juvenile system. Most juvenile delinquents range from as low as the age of seven to the age of seventeen. Once the delinquent or anyone turns the age of eighteen, they are considered an adult. Therefore, they are tried as an adult, in the justice system. There are many different reasons why a child would commit crime, such as mental and physical factors, home conditions, neighborhood environment and school conditions. In addition, there are a variety of effects that juvenile justice systems can either bad effects or good effects. Finally there are many different solutions that can reduce juvenile delinquency. As a result, juvenile delinquency is a major issue and the likeliness of it can be reduced. In order to reduce juvenile delinquency there has to be an understanding of the causes and the effects.