Reflective Paper Conduct Disorder
Conduct disorder concerns a pattern of negative behavior in childhood and adolescence. Conduct disorder affects approximately 1% to 3% of the population of children under 18. Some of the qualities needed to make the official diagnosis can be hard to define. Some children are defiant and break rules but do not necessarily have this disorder. To have conduct disorder the child's behavior must be extreme and ongoing not just getting in trouble now and then. The diagnosis is three times more common among boys than girls. Symptoms of conduct disorder include defiance, impulsive behavior, drug use, ongoing criminal activity and violence. Some professionals believe that there is a hereditary element to conduct disorder. Most professionals agree that issues in a child's home life affects this disorder a great deal more. Conduct disorder has been associated with child abuse, drug addiction, alcoholism, serious family conflict, and poverty. Conduct disorder can also be an early sign of depression or bipolar disorder. Some of the earliest symptoms of conduct disorder can be seen in children as young as three. Early symptoms of conduct disorder include breaking the rules without obvious reasons, cruel or aggressive behavior towards animals and then people, intentionally setting fires, lying, running away and vandalizing or destroying property. As children get older if not treated their symptoms become very serious and start to involve the police authorities. The cruel and aggressive behavior towards people and animals include bullying, fighting, dangerous weapons, forced sexual activity and ongoing theft. If a child still has not received help by the time they're in their teenage years heavy drinking and heavy drug use are a real possibility.
These children often make no effort to hide their aggressive behaviors. They have a difficult time making any meaningful friends. They rarely attend school and get in trouble with the law. There is no test for diagnosing conduct disorder, a diagnosis can be made if a child has a history of conduct disorder behaviors. Treatment can start as early as three years old. For treatment to be successful the child's family needs to be involved. If a child has been abused the child may need to be removed from the family and placed in a home where this will not happen again. Conduct disorder patients receive anti-anxiety medicines and later in life anti-aggression medicines to help control their negative behaviors. There are many resources to help children with their conduct disorder diagnosis. The best place to start is with your school counselor. Here at Bainbridge Island high school we have a full-time counselor to help children deal with these types of problems. Children often get great results with group therapy and psychotherapy as well. With medication and therapy children can get better over time. If conduct disorder is not handled it can lead to many tragic results including drug and alcohol abuse, violence or even jail. Children with conduct disorder may go on to develop antisocial personality disorder as young adults if they do not begin treatment. If I had to do this project over again I would like to figure out how to make animation in the presentation. There were a few really good anti-bullying messages that had animation that I would've loved to have used but I did not know how to put them into the presentation format in Google.