Antisocial Personality Disorder
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Antisocial Personality Disorder:
• Also referred to as sociopathy or psychopathy
• Individuals exhibit antisocial behaviour
Antisocial Behaviour:
• Verbally or physically harmful to others, animals and/or property
• Seriously violates social expectations or norms
• Two components:
– Presence of antisocial behaviour
– Absence of prosocial behaviour
• Natural for children to exhibit some antisocial behaviour during
development
• High levels of antisocial behaviour considered a clinical
condition
• Antisocial personality disorder is only diagnosed in adults, but
bears resemblance to conduct disorder
• Approximately 4% of the population suffers from antisocial
personality disorder
– 3% men
– 1% women
Oppositional-Defiant Disorder:
• Sufferers: Young children hostile
towards authority
• Can lead to conduct disorder
Conduct Disorder:
• Sufferers: Older children who lie,
steal and behave violently.
• A small number of these children
who do not improve with
maturation develop antisocial
personality disorder
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Causes:
• Family problems: unstable marriage, harsh/inconsistent discipline
child abuse (physical or sexual), frequent changes in residence or
primary caregiver, learning disabilities etc.
• Neurological disorders, low IQ, low socioeconomic status and
having a parent who suffers from the disorder or substance
abuse increases the likelihood of developing antisocial
personality disorder
• A child may behave antisocially for a period of time when a
stressor occurs, but this is not considered a clinical condition
Stressor: traumatic event in one’s life such as the death of a
parent
RIP
Sources (pics, left to right):
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Symptoms:
• Non conformity to social norms
• Deceitful and manipulative towards
others, often to get something (ex.
money, drugs)
• Impulsive, long list of past
residences and employments
• Irritable, aggressive and engages
in physical violence
• A reckless disregard for the safety
of themselves and others
• Consistently irresponsible, inability
to hold down or find a job, fails to
do such things as pay bills
• No conscience
• Shows few feelings beyond
contempt for others
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Treatments and Therapies:
Children and Adolescents:
• Possible if intervention is soon enough, though difficult
• Primary treatment: therapy
– Goal: to develop positive behaviour to replace negative ones
– Systematic, designed to improve communication within a group,
often the family or a group of similar children
– Methods include: modeling, role-playing, corrective feedback and
reinforcement systems
– Success is largely dependent on the cognitive capacity and
emotional development of the individual
• Most severe cases  medication used to control behaviour
Adults:
• Extremely difficult to treat
• Often a chronic condition
• Some medications aid in controlling behaviour
• However, non compliance and abuse prevent widespread use