Conduct Disorders

Understanding and Identifying Conduct Disorders

An understanding of conduct disorders is important to researchers, educators, and policymakers in several ways. Researchers require knowledge of conduct disorders in order to investigate diagnostic measures and treatment efficacies that improve educational outcomes for these students. Teachers need to understand classroom behavioral management strategies for conduct disorders to assist students with their academic achievement. School administrators must also understand behavior needs to ensure appropriate teacher training, empirically based service models, and systemic structures that support positive learning environments. Policymakers in government agencies and business provide a crucial role in designing curriculum materials, establishing regulations, and providing infrastructure for school systems. Therefore, policymakers also require an understanding of risk factors and treatments for students with conduct disorders.

Formulating decisions regarding the identification or treatment of maladaptive behavior requires appropriate expertise. The clinical skills of diagnosis can appear deceptively succinct, even simplistic, if symptoms are treated as a checklist of manifest items. However, diagnosis is a multifaceted and complex process, requiring substantial professional training. Although the clinician is provided a list of symptoms to identify, this information must be juxtaposed with a broader and more sophisticated understanding of normal development. Understanding the normal developmental trajectory of behavioral stages provides a good comparison benchmark for identifying abnormal behaviors. As they mature, typically developing children follow a predictable sequence when acquiring skills for self-regulation of their emotions and actions, stronger impulse inhibition, and self-awareness. A professional mental health provider will know the ages at which children and youth typically exhibit behaviors, even negative ones such as biting or rebellion. The same behaviors may be considered maladaptive for one child and not another based on age-appropriateness. For example, a 2-year-old child who threatens another child on the playground to secure a toy is viewed differently from an adolescent exhibiting the same behavior. Frequency [Page 173]and chronicity of behaviors also are hallmarks. Criteria for conduct disorders will often require a specific number of incidents of a particular type over a period of time for diagnosis.

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