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  • Essay / Assessment of conduct disorder and whether it is a psychological case

    Mary Jane is a 13-year-old girl who attends St. Andrew's Secondary School for Girls. Her mother-in-law, accompanied by her mother, transported Mary to the Child and Family Protective Services Agency after she was caught by soldiers having sex with two boys in an abandoned building during school hours. The mother-in-law describes Mary Janes' transport to the agency as the straw that broke the camel's back. Mary is described as physically harming her siblings, persistently stealing items such as cell phones and books from her classmate almost daily, and compulsively lying, even when she is not trying to get something. thing in return. She has run away from home several times and misses a significant number of days from school despite the fact that her parents send her there. According to the stepmother, she also received reports from the school that Mary Jane had coerced other girls into engaging in sexual activities with herself or other boys. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Mary originally lived with her mother, father, and an unknown number of siblings. Her mother and father are separated and Mary now lives with her stepmother and father, but sometimes visits her mother. When she arrived at the agency, Mary's uniform was ill-fitting, her eyes were red and puffy, and she was extremely quiet during the interview. Her head was lowered and she avoided eye contact. The few times she spoke, she did so in a low voice and didn't seem to care about being there, just like her mother. Her mother-in-law, on the other hand, was very animated, frustrated and recounted in detail everything she remembered. Mary Jane was diagnosed with adolescent-onset severe conduct disorder code 312.81, with limited prosocial emotions in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013). She was diagnosed with conduct disorder because she met six of the 15 necessary requirements, including: being physically cruel to people, forcing people to engage in sexual activity, lying to obtain goods or favors, stealing items of significant value without confronting the victim, skipped school before the age of 13, and ran away from home at least twice while living with his parents. The diagnosis is serious because she has more than the minimum of three conduct problems required for a diagnosis and these conduct problems cause significant harm to others, such as physical cruelty toward her siblings and forced sexual intercourse. She was assigned the label “with limited prosocial emotions” because she exhibited three of the required characteristics described by her mother-in-law. She was described as showing no remorse or guilt when she did something wrong, only when she was arrested. She has also been described as being insensitive, specifically cold, indifferent, and indifferent to the feelings of others. On one occasion, she had hurt her sister and she continued her day while watching her cry. She also doesn't care about her academic results and doesn't make the effort to succeed. Jane has been displaying these limited prosocial behaviors for more than 12 months as required by the DSM. On Axis One of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; DSM-4., Text Revision; Washington DC, 2000), Mary Jane was also diagnosed with onset atadolescence with severe conduct disorder code 312.81 with limited prosocial emotions. The requirements for a conduct disorder diagnosis are the same in Mary's case as mentioned in the DSM V above. Mary does not have any personality disorders or mental retardation required for axis two and she has no general health problems for an axis three diagnosis. On axis four, the major psychosocial and environmental problem concerns problems with her main support group due to her parents' separation which results in Mary having to transition between living with her mother and mother-in-law. On axis five, she received an overall functioning rating of 61 to 70 because despite her conduct problems, she functions well and maintains meaningful interpersonal relationships. To understand conduct disorders, several modalities and theoretical perspectives must be used. Coordination between the school, parents and therapists is required to reduce or eliminate the identified problems as much as possible. To understand Mary's case, a behavioral approach can be used. Prochaska and Norcross divided behavioral therapy into the three Cs, but in Mary's treatment the emphasis will be on contingency management and cognitive behavior modification. The basic idea behind contingency management is that behavioral patterns are learned through exposure to rewards and consequences, and therefore, inappropriate behaviors can be unlearned and replaced with more appropriate prosocial behaviors through the manipulation of rewards and consequences that promote prosocial behavior and discourage antisocial behavior. According to Frick (2001), one of the main reasons for using contingency management is that children with conduct disorders come from families that do not provide a consistent and contingent environment in which misdeeds are punished and good deeds rewarded. This is evident in Mary's mother, as she seemed complacent towards most of her daughter's actions. Another reason is that children with conduct disorders are often too concerned about the positive consequences of an action, such as Mary getting a phone, but she is not as concerned about the negative consequences of getting into trouble for having stole said phone. One form of contingency management that would be used is a behavioral contract. In this contract, an agreement would be made between Mary and her parents, which would explicitly state that behavior, such as stealing, should be eliminated. She would be searched daily when she returned home and at the end of the week she would be rewarded if she didn't steal anything and punished if she didn't follow the contract. According to Barkoukis, Reiss, and Dombeck (2008), it is important to be interested in children's thoughts, as well as their actual problematic behaviors. If children have an incorrect, overly generalized, or exaggerated understanding of a situation, it can make them more likely to misbehave. Cognitive-behavioral approaches to therapy teach children and parents to identify and address the erroneous beliefs that make conflict more likely and help dismantle those beliefs. In dismantling these beliefs, Prochaska and Norcross pointed to Donald Meichenbaum's self-taught training that can be used to help children with conduct disorders. During this training, Mary would learn to reduce negative self-statements that produce negative emotions and at the same time develop positive self-statements that facilitate adaptive self-control. The therapist..