[Psychopathy in childhood and adolescence]

Personality disorders manifest themselves in stable deviations of personality traits that especially arise in negative interactions with others. Those typical dysfunctional interactions can be observed particularly in dissocial and antisocial personality disorders: adults with severe forms of personality disorders often showed specific symptoms in childhood and adolescence. Clinical researchers therefore demand a respective diagnosis of childhood and adolescent psychopathy. There is an extensive body of research on dissocial and borderline personality disorders in children and adolescents. To date the severe form of dissocial personality disorders, psychopathy, cannot be specifically classified. The transfer of this diagnosis to childhood and adolescence is crucial: based on the assumption of persistence and the risk of stigmatisation many clinicians refuse to diagnose psychopathy at a young age. On the other hand there are positive treatment outcomes that aim at symptom reduction from a very early age. The specification of dissocial personality disorders in childhood and adolescence may encourage the development of new treatments and the de-stigmatisation as well as qualify the dogged assumption of persistence of personality disorders.