Figure 1. Conduct Disorder Child. [Online Image] (n.d)
Retrieved Jan 21,2016
Image Source www.familytherapy.org.uk
Conduct Disorder
History of Conduct Disorder
Figure 3. Fifth Century Buddha [Online Image](n.d)
Retrieved Jan 28, 2016
Image Source
https://www.studyblue.com/notes/note/n/buddhism/deck/6681099
It has long been believed that children who were “out of control” and juvenile delinquents were so, based solely on their home lives. As an example, it was said that in the sixth century B.C., in India, the Buddha described meeting a group of youths who were labelled as behaving as “quick tempered, rough and greedy” that their families and friends had given them sweetmeats and always petted them, with the result that they would go about plundering and eating; they slapped the women and girls of the clan on the back’ (Anguttara-Nikaya, III: 63) This statement goes to the frame of mind that the Buddha believed that the social behavioral issues that these certain individuals portrayed, was the result of poor parenting. The Sacred Books of the Buddhists, IV, 181 has said, “They should restrain a child from vice, train him to a profession, contract a suitable marriage for him, and in due time hand over his inheritance. In return the child is conscious of maintaining the family tradition and thus not becoming a participant in committing crimes which will bring a bad name not only to him but to the entire family.” (quoted in Ratnapala & Ward, 1993) Simply put, it is the responsibility of all parents to ensure their children are taught to conduct themselves in a respectful way, taught to become a valuable part of society, and act in such a way that will greatly impact themselves, as well as those in their society. However, sadly, this does not always occur, hence leading to children having Conduct Disorder.
In the seventh century B.C., the Hebrews believed that parents have absolute power of life and death over a child. They believed that if they could not control their children’s behavior issues, then the State should become involved to inflict punishment as they deemed fit. This reflection was written in the Old Testament of the Bible, in Deuteronomy,
18. If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:
19. Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his
city, and unto the gate of his place; 20. And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. 21. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away
from you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear. (Deuteronomy 21, 18–21)
Figure 4. Deuteronomy. [Online Image] (n.d.)
Retrieved Jan 28, 2016
Image Source http://truemiracleswithgenealogy.com/tag/holy-bible/
Figure 5. 19th Century Asylum for Children.
[Online Image] (n.d.)
Retrieved Jan 28, 2016
Image source http://caslater.freeservers.com/disability4.htm
Figure 7. August Aichhorn (Circa 1925)
[Online Image] (n.d)
Retrieved Jan. 26, 2016)
Image Source
During the nineteenth century, there started to be a consensus that behavioral issues had a wide scope of meaning. It wasn’t so much “out of control, or delinquency”, but there were many sub groups. They began making distinctions between youths with “mad” (insane) behavior to “bad” (delinquent) behavior. In doing so, different institutions began so develop to house many different conduct disorder issues.
Such institutions were, asylums for the profoundly retarded, orphanages for the parentless, workhouses for the destitute, reformatories for the delinquent. (E. Jane Costello and Adrian Angold, 2001) During this part of dividing youths into these categories, the question of who could and who should take responsibility for the subgroup of delinquent or conduct disordered youth became quite a debated issue. Each group had their own ideas of how to best treat children with Conduct Disorder, and because each had their own point of view differing from the other groups, no real consensus could be made to provide a treatment plan. Meanwhile, these children would remain in these institutions, away from the public that they may harm.
Figure 6. Juvenile Home for Youths in the 19th Century. [Online Image] (n.d.)
Retrieved Jan 28, 2016
Image Source http://www.ushistory.org/us/26d.asp
In the 20th Century, August Aichhorn ( 1878-1949) was the first person to become aware of the behavior aspects of “out of control” children, and began to apply psychiatry methods in order to help them. (E. Jane Costello and Adrian Angold, 2001)
August Aichhorn wrote about these “out of control” children, “A strict definition or delimitation of these groups is difficult because they tend to merge into each other, but you are familiar with these cases from everyday observation, in social work, in the child guidance clinic, in the Juvenile Court, and in similar contacts” (Aichhorn, 1935, p.4) Children in this time of the 20th Century were not yet labelled as “Conduct Disorder”. This term began more in the later part of the 20th Century. Aichhorn and his later colleagues would simply label these types of behavioral children as out of control, incorrigible, delinquent, deviant, vagrant, wayward, dissocial to name a few (E. Jane Costello and Adrian Angold, 2001)
Aichhorn in 1935 believed and stated, “That the therapist’s role as one of a ‘remedial educator’, taking over when standard educational methods have failed, working together with educators on the task of making the child ‘fit for his place in society’. ‘When symptoms of delinquency are not predominantly neurotically determined, pedagogical skill is important because of the necessity to regulate the child’s environment . . . (but) in every case, the educator should consult a psychoanalytically trained physician so that disease will not be overlooked’ (Aichhorn, 1935, p. 9).
In other words, he was of the belief that should parents fail in teaching their children proper conduct of behavior, then it was the therapist’s or educators responsibly to help these children, and to also teach them proper skills of conduct, where their parents had failed to do so. He also wanted to be sure that the children did not have neurological disorders that could be resulting in this type of conduct behavior. It then became the responsibility of the educators to discuss with a psychologist to ensure these types of diseases were not prevalent, in order to ensure the proper treatment was in place for the disorderly youths.
As the twentieth century progressed, around the mid 1960’s, is when psychologists began to see certain children with behavioral issues becoming labelled as having disorders of conduct. (The International Classification of Disease; eighth revision) They started to concentrate of behaviors where the basic rights of others were not being respected, and actions such as; severe cases of lying, destruction of private property, aggression and violence towards others and animals becoming the precursors to “Conduct Disorders” In the section on ‘associated features’ of the DSM-IV Conduct Disorder contains the following (E. Jane Costello and Adrian Angold, 2001) “Individuals with Conduct Disorder may have little empathy and little concern for the feelings, wishes, and well-being of others . . . They may be callous and lack appropriate feelings of guilt or remorse. It can be difficult to evaluate whether displayed remorse is genuine because the individuals learn that expressing guilt may reduce or prevent punishment.” (American Psychiatric Association, 1994, p. 87)
In the late 20th century to the 21st century, we have discovered that these Conduct Disordered youths have escalated greatly as of those in the previous discussed centuries. We have seen it in the growing epidemic of school shootings across North America. Researchers have maintained “that an important risk factor for violence is untreated conduct disorder, as reflected in the high levels of untreated mental health problems among juvenile detainees. Finally, data on the decision to hospitalize children show a clear association with perceptions of dangerousness." (Pescosolido, Fettes, Martin, Monahan and McLeod, 2007). Treatments today still include August Aichhorn's view on psychiatry, along with counseling available to help parents teach their kids positive reinforcements, and at times, in more severe causes medications may be useful.
As we have seen, these types of behaviors have been around and documented from thousands of years ago. Each century have tried to come up with various forms of conclusions as to why certain youths have a lack of proper conduct in society, and have tried various forms of treatments in order to help solve this growing dilemma. There has never been such a problem in the past of children being as violent as there is in today’s society. It stands to reason that something must change in the treatment of today’s children with Conduct Disorders, to see this increasingly violence in our schools cease to exist all together. Please see the “Treatment” page to see treatments available today.
Figure 8. 21st Century Youth. [Online Image] (n.d.)
Retreived Jan 28, 2016
Image Source http://www.wisegeek.net/what-are-the-treatments-for-conduct-disorder.htm