The development of a rating scale to screen social and emotional detachment in children and adolescents

Abstract

Rating scales to assess psychopathic characteristics in children and adolescents show a considerable item overlap with rating scales to assess attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), oppositional-defiant disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD) symptoms. The aim of this study is to preliminary test a short questionnaire clinicians can use to screen the unique characteristics of psychopathy. Parental ratings of psychopathic characteristics and symptoms of ADHD, ODD and CD were gathered in a community sample of 2535 4-18-year-old Dutch children. The dimensionality of the ratings was determined by factor analysis and related to ADHD, ODD and CD. Two factors emerged covering egocentric-narcissistic and callous-unemotional characteristics. To avoid unnecessary stigmatization of youngsters the first factor is referred to as the "social detachment dimension" and the second as the "emotional detachment dimension". Parental ratings were reliable across all age and gender groups, and correlated moderately with ODD and CD, but not with ADHD. Preliminary findings support a two-dimensional syndrome depicting respectively narcissistic and unemotional characteristics. The syndrome is associated with ODD and CD symptoms and possibly depicts a subtype of the ODD/CD childhood disorder.