Psychosocial Treatments for Conduct Disorder in Children and Adolescents

Abstract

Significant advances have been made in the treatment of antisocial and aggressive behavior (conduct disorder), a severe source of impairment among children and adolescents. Several psychosocial interventions with strong evidence in their behalf with children and adolescents are highlighted in the chapter. They include parent management training, multisystemic therapy, multidimensional treatment foster care, cognitively based treatments, functional family therapy, brief strategic family therapy, and the Good Behavior Game. The treatments have been very well studied, with multiple replications. There remain questions about the long-term impact of treatments, the persons for whom one or more of these treatments are well suited, and how to optimize therapeutic change.