Cognitive Distortions Among Conduct Disorder Children and Normal Children

Conduct disorder refers to a pattern of severe antisocial and aggressive behavior manifested in childhood or adolescence. This psychiatric diagnosis has been one of the most widely studied of all childhood disorders, and this extensive body of research has documented a large number of dispositional and contextual risk factors that can play a role in the etiology of this disorder. There exists a relation between mild cognitive distortions and development of delinquent behavior. Cognitive distortions are inaccurate attitudes, thoughts or beliefs concerning one's own or others social behavior. Conduct disorder children use cognitive distortions to justify socially unacceptable actions as acceptable. In conduct disorder cognitive distortions serve the purposes like to avoid responsibility for some or all of the offence, to deny there is a victim-completely or partially, to allow the offending to continue, to avoid intervention, to avoid facing own painful issues (which may need to be faced before offending stops). Cognitive distortions are dynamic risk factors, or factors about the individual that increase the likelihood of re-offending, for many offenders. The present study focuses on identifying and understanding cognitive distortions among delinquents. A sample of 15 children attending CDS in the age group of 12 to 16 years with a diagnosis of conduct disorder according to DSM-IV criteria constituted the sample. They were screened and evaluated with DSM-IV criteria and 15 normal children were also selected for comparison. The result shows that there is significant difference between the area of cognitive distortions like self-centered, blaming others, minimizing and assuming the worst.