Aggressive behavior among children and adolescents has confounded parents and perplexed professionals—especially those tasked with its treatment and prevention—for countless years. As baffling as these behaviors are, however, recent advances in neuroscience focusing on brain development have helped to make increasing sense of their complexity. Focusing on their most prevalent forms, Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Conduct Disorder, Disruptive Behavior Disorders advances the understanding of DBD on a number of significant fronts. Its neurodevelopmental emphasis within an ecological approach offers links between brain structure and function and critical environmental influences and the development of these specific disorders. The book's findings and theories help to differentiate DBD within the contexts of normal development, non-pathological misbehavior and non-DBD forms of pathology. Throughout these chapters are myriad implications for accurate identification, effective intervention and future cross-disciplinary study. Key issues covered include: Gene-environment interaction models. Neurobiological processes and brain functions. Callous-unemotional traits and developmental pathways. Relationships between gender and DBD. Multiple pathways of familial transmission. Disruptive Behavior Disorders is a groundbreaking resource for researchers, scientist-practitioners and graduate students in clinical child and school psychology, psychiatry, educational psychology, prevention science, child mental health care, developmental psychology and social work.

As reflected in the title, the purpose of this book is to guide clinicians in understanding and treating youth with severe antisocial behavior. Children and adolescents with conduct disorders operate at quite a high cost to society. In many opinion polls, juvenile crime and violence is rated as one of the most pressing concerns for many in our society. This widespread concern has prompted professionals from many disciplines to search for more effective interventions to prevent and treat youth with such disorders. This book is my attempt to summarize the current status of this very important endeavor. In providing this guide to clinicians, I have attempted to emphasize the critical link between understanding the clinical presentation, course, and causes of conduct disorders and designing effective interventions for children and adolescents with these disorders. Many past books, book chapters, and review articles have emphasized one or the other of these objectives. Some have provided excellent summaries of the vast amount of research on youth with conduct disorders without explicitly and clearly describing the clinical applica tions of this research. Others have focused on the implementation of specific interventions for youth with conduct disorders that is divorced from a basic understanding of the many diverse and clinically important characteristics of this population. The overriding theme of this book is that successful clinical inter vention requires an integration of both bodies of knowledge.

This outstanding textbook presents innovative interventions for youth with severe emotional and behavioral disorders. Community Treatment for Youth is designed to fill a gap between the knowledge base and clinical practice through its presentation of theory, practice parameters, training requirements, and research evidence. Featuring community-based and state-of-the-art services for youth with severe emotional and behavioral disorders and their families, this volume describes each intervention in depth, along with the supporting evidence for its utility. Most chapters present a single intervention as an alternative to institutional care. Shared characteristics of these interventions include delivery of services in the community (homes, schools, and neighborhoods) provided largely by parents and paraprofessional staff. The interventions are appropriate to use in any of the child human services sectors and have been developed in the field with real-world child and family clients. In addition, they offer a reduced cost in comparison to institutional care. Several chapters address diagnostic-specific psychosocial and psychopharmacological treatments, which are likely to be provided as adjunctive treatment in a clinical setting. Designed to update professionals in the field about effective services, Community Treatment for Youth will serve as a resource for academics, policymakers, practitioners, consumers, and researchers.