Antisocial Specifier Definition

Traditionally, most attempts to distinguish meaningful subgroups of children and adolescents with serious conduct problems (CPs) focused on variations, seriousness and frequency of conduct problems displayed by the child, level of aggression, age-of-onset, and presence of certain comorbid conditions such as ADHD. New approaches, however, are forging a new path that focuses on a child’s affective and interpersonal style, grouping together children presenting with both conduct problems and callous-unemotional traits (CP+CU), which may yield a developmental extension to the construct of psychopathy, and allow targeting of antisocial-behaviours early in life (Frick, Ray, Thornton, & Kahn, 2014). These children, to meet diagnostic-criteria for conduct disorder (CD) with the Limited Prosocial Emotions Specifier under DSM-5 criteria must display at least two or more specified characteristics, which can be a lack of remorse, guilt, empathy or concern about performance in important activities, or callousness, shallow or deficient affect, over at least twelve-months (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Identifying this subgroup is critical in enhancing our understanding of and determining …show more content…
Although studies imply that labels such as “conduct disorder,” “antisocial personality,” “delinquent,” and “psychopathic” may have negative repercussions, especially in forensic contexts (Edens & Cox, 2012; Rockett, Murrie, & Boccaccini, 2007), it can be argued that the diagnostic-label is in some ways beneficial. Referring to CP+CU youths in a colloquial manner, using labels like “psychopath” and describing antisocial-behavior can generate more negative perceptions of the likelihood of recidivism and treatment-effectiveness than applying official diagnostic- labels, like “conduct” or “psychopathic” disorder (Boccaccini, Murrie, Clark, &