Conduct Disorders: Evidence-Based Therapies Offer Hope for
Positive Outcomes
Many families today are concerned about conduct problems in
children. These disorders become evident through aggressive
behaviors toward peers or when a child disobeys parents and
teachers. In many states the rate of these types of behaviors in
children is increasing and often the police get involved. As a result,
more children are jailed or placed in juvenile detention.
In the United States, conduct problems are currently the most
common reason for referring a child to a mental health
professional. Researchers now focus on how to control these
behaviors in addition to searching for the cause. To date, we have
learned that once conduct problems start, the child does not seem
to grow out of this behavior. Even conduct disorders found in very
young children often means that without treatment or intervention
problem behaviors will continue. Today we have evidence-based
treatments that are known to work and offer hope in changing
negative behaviors in children.
Evidence-based treatments focus on the individual behaviors
demonstrated by each child. These vary from efforts in teaching
anger control, to broad efforts at implementing family therapies
that impact the child’s social environment. Whether the treatment
is individualized or multiple approaches are used, research has
provided a wide array of evidence-based options.
Characteristic Behaviors
Children with conduct disorders fail to respect authority. They may
show this in their behavior by stealing, lying, bullying or
destroying property. These children might tease, frighten others, or
become physically harmful to other children and adults.
Adolescents may ignore curfews, run away from home or skip
school. As these children become older, their problem behaviors
may evolve into criminal behaviors.
In order to be considered serious enough to be a conduct disorder,
these negative behaviors must persist for at least six months, and
must significantly interfere with the child’s ability to do well in
school or interact with other people. What can be done to help
these children?
Specific Interventions for Conduct Disorder That Work!
One evidence-based therapy for children with conduct disorders
that shows some promise is cognitive behavior therapy (CBT).
CBT focuses first on how a child thinks. Their behaviors are
studied in relation to their thoughts. The goal of this therapy is to
identify thought processes that are not in line with the real
situation. For example, if a child receives a friendly greeting from
a teacher, why would they respond by yelling back in anger? The
child might be lacking the social skills needed to react
appropriately.
Using CBT, children are taught how to respond. Children can learn
signals that tell them when to be nice or when to use caution.
Learned signals might include teaching the child to listen for a nice
voice or an angry voice. The child will learn to recognize signals
and use new behavior skills to react more appropriately. Each child
receives therapy that is individualized according to the child’s
behavior.
What is the Parent’s Role?
Parent training is a key element in many of the successful evidence
based therapies. Parents need to learn how to respond to their
children in ways that will increase appropriate behaviors and
decrease the inappropriate problem behaviors. In parent training,
parents learn how to be more attentive to a child’s behavior.
Conclusion
The overall goal is to help children identify thoughts that might
prevent the development of positive social skills. Once a therapist
can identify how a child is thinking, then appropriate evidence
based therapies can be applied to change the negative behavior.
For additional information on each of these evidence-based
therapies, please contact Barb Lindberg at NAMI-MN for fact
sheets outlining the specific purpose and goal of each element of
treatment.