Psychopathy is best addressed before adulthood when a child’s brain is still forming. The ultimate goal in the prevention and treatment of psychopathy is to mitigate, through early childhood intervention, community dialog, sorely needed respite for parents, and, in extreme cases, special residential treatment centers that have been trained specifically in Conduct Disorder (CD) treatment. You, the general public, should care because CD is sometimes referred to as the “juvenile form of psychopathy” – in essence, children with CD have the potential to develop psychopathy.
But seriously though. In plain English, what does any of that mean?
I want to bring up what I think is a huge issue within the already huge issue of CD and psychopathy. CD and psychopathy pretty much make zero sense unless you have been studying it for years. Even then, you have to really work to understand it.
I have been running a support group for parents of CD and only CD for nearly four years now. I read every book on the subject I can get my hands on, and in the end, though I understand it more than the average bear, I am still left with more questions than answers. Yes, the more you learn about something the more you see you need to learn, but the subject of CD/psychopathy is, in slang terms, redonkulous (more ridiculous than ridiculous).
There seems to be this weird divide in the community. The people who understand people with psychopathy don’t really treat them, and the people who treat them don’t really understand them. Meanwhile, everyone suffers and no one gets any better. This is something that takes years to treat.
But, kinda like a burst water main under your house, it’s also something we need fixed yesterday.
Because CD, left unchecked, can turn into psychopathy, it is important to halt that progression. But how the heck do we do that?
So, you want to understand psychopathy, huh?
In The Psychopath Whisperer: The Science of Those Without Conscience by Dr. Kent Kiehl, Dr. Kiehl does an amazing job of being an engaging storyteller, making the information in the book accessible to the general public, and still getting his science on.
But that’s pretty rare, in my experience. Without Conscience: the Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us by Dr. Robert Hare, creator of the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) was a little less accessible to the general public, but still digestible.
Beyond that, though? The science in some of these books is darn near impossible to follow for the average citizen.
And that’s not right.
YOU already know someone with psychopathy – probably more than one person!
This issue affects every single person in the world one way or another. Most estimates say 1 in 100 people has psychopathy. Everyone knows 100 people. At least. This is not about if you know someone who is going to hurt people: this is about which person you know is going to hurt people.
This issue affects everyone and most of the information out there is overwhelming and intensely scientific. If you are ever going to understand it you have to have an insane drive and want to devote years of your life to figuring it out, as I have. Most people are not going to do this. I don’t blame them. This issue has become all-consuming to me. To the point where I literally wished the other day there was a “discover the person with psychopathy” video game so I could have fun, yet still be thinking about this stuff at the same time.
That is the level of commitment it takes to understand the information that is out there.
That’s just not right.
Because psychopathy affects everyone, everyone should be able to understand it without needing to spend years doing research and getting a degree in neuroscience to do it.
As I said, everyone knows 100 people. Which means everyone knows someone with psychopathy. You will likely be harmed by or be close to someone who is harmed by a person with psychopathy at some point in your life. My guess is it will be multiple times, not just once.
People with psychopathy are not slathering murderers, as Hollywood and most of the news would have you believe. Some do kill, yes, but that number is very, very small.
More than likely one will con you out of some money, screw you over by telling lies about you, steal from you, gaslight you (make you believe something different than what you saw with your own eyes), and unless you have read for years about people with psychopathy, you will likely never know what hit you. They are charming and seem normal at first. They will get people to take their side over yours. They will convince people they are the victim and turn people against you. They will likely do all of this easily, instinctively, like breathing.
Simply put, people with psychopathy are mean people who will hurt you or screw you over and not care. They are born with the predisposition to be this way and their brains are different than ours.
We want to stop the harm done by people with psychopathy. The only way to stop the harm done by people with psychopathy is to get it handled when these people are young children. But no one is doing that. These kids are considered “untreatable,” but that’s just because no one has been trained in how to treat them.
If you had a rare form of cancer, you would go to the place that treated that form or cancer. You wouldn’t go to your primary care physician and expect them to be able to treat this rare form of cancer. That would be dumb.
But that is the approach we take with CD, even though CD is more common than autism. Treating CD takes a specially trained staff. This can’t be fixed by your local therapist, school “psychologist” (who are almost never actual psychologists), nor by anyone employed by your local school district. It just can’t. I’m sure they mean well, but they don’t understand the condition and aren’t equipped to deal with it.
I love my primary care physician. But I wouldn’t ask her to perform open heart surgery on me!
CD needs people who know how to treat it. It needs residential treatment centers where all the staff is trained in treating CD.
We need all this more urgently than you think. There are tons of studies out there, all of which give conflicting information. I have seen many different studies citing that roughly 4-5% of children have CD, but one study I saw claims 6-16% of boys and 2-9% of girls have CD.
At the moment, the best model we have is Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center, which has amazing results. I don’t know if it’s the perfect answer, but it’s better than the nothing we’ve got now.
It will take years to develop these special centers. Which is why it is so urgent for us to act RIGHT NOW. In the span of time it would take to develop these special centers, children with CD will grow up to develop psychopathy. The earlier we can find these kids and get them treatment, the better it will be. For everyone.
At least one person with psychopathy in your life will hurt you or screw you over leaving you bewildered as to what happened. Or they will do it to someone you love. Or both. Again, this will happen at least once in your life. Probably multiple times.
Understanding psychopathy is hard. I don’t expect everyone to do it. But as I will do my best to explain the problems that individuals with psychopathy and children with CD pose, and the barriers they and their families face when trying to obtain treatment (mostly it is a lack thereof). I will do my best to explain everything you need to know in plain English.
The most important thing for you to know about CD and psychopathy is that parents cannot do it alone. We need your help in spreading awareness and advocating for the support and services our children need when they are YOUNG. This cannot be done by parents alone. It truly takes a village.
Combating Conduct Disorder 
How does one begin to find these children? How will they be helped? How can you know for sure they will be potential?
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Hi Jessamyn,
Those first two are the million dollar questions!
First, we need better diagnostics and better-trained clinicians doing the diagnostics. Second, we need to erase the stigma with the diagnosis itself. Many clinicians will not even diagnose a young child with CD because they know it can eventually turn into psychopathy, and they don’t want to “label” these children. Most people think it is “untreatable.” I found out when my son was 15 that a diagnosing doctor who had seen him at age 9 knew he had CD, but just didn’t tell me because he didn’t think it would be helpful since you “can’t treat it.” I was looking for the wrong interventions for FIVE YEARS because of this! I have parents in my group who have had doctors tell them not to tell other people about the CD diagnosis because it means psychopathy/sociopathy and no one will touch these kids.
So, first and foremost, we need to stop making the word psychopathy a bad word. It’s not. Any more than any other medical condition.
Even if we had the treatment model in hand today (which we don’t) it will still take years to set something like this up. But certainly, the first step in that process is to acknowledge that “difficult” to treat and “impossible” to treat is not the same thing.
As for your last question, I’m not sure what you are asking. Would you mind clarifying your question?
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