Beyond Reactive Attachment Disorder: How Might Attachment Research Inform Child Psychiatry Practice?

This article provides an updated review of attachment research with a focus on how comprehensive clinical assessment and intervention informs the care of young children. Child psychiatrists can serve as an important part of care coordination teams working with young children who have histories of early maltreatment and/or disruption in caregiving whether or not the children they are seeing meet criteria for an attachment disorder. Child psychiatrists should be familiar with both comprehensive assessment and the recent attachment-based interventions and appreciate how pharmacotherapy can be a useful adjunctive intervention when intensive therapy alone is ineffective.