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Early intervention can reduce aggression and impulsivity in children with psychopathic traits.

Intensive, individualized treatment programs lower antisocial behaviors in callous-unemotional youth.

Self-report diagnostic tools by youth align better with clinician assessments than caregiver reports.

Schools may overlook children with conduct disorders due to gaps in special education law coverage.

“Once a psychopath, always a psychopath” is an apt aphorism for what many have traditionally concluded about adults displaying very high levels of psychopathic traits. Lack of remorse or shame, no feelings of guilt, callous and unemotional acts, poor behavioral controls, manipulative scheming, cunning preying on others … all these are typical psychopathic traits that can endure in such people over their lifetimes.

Many researchers have documented the reality that the few treatment programs for them typically produce little, if any, change.1 But … what if there were interventions while still young? Is there any hope then?

Early age intervention

Preeminent psychopathy researcher, Dr. Robert D. Hare, noted in his popular work, Without Conscience, The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, that perhaps by intervening at a very early age, it might be possible “to modify the behavioral patterns of ‘budding psychopaths’ by reducing aggression and impulsivity and by teaching them strategies for satisfying their needs in more prosocial ways.”2

Treatment programs and their effectiveness

In a summary of six “high-quality” studies of the efficacy of various treatment modalities for youth with high levels of psychopathic traits or callous-unemotional behavior, psychology researchers, Drs. Devon Polaschek and Jennifer Skeem, state, "The main conclusion that can........

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