Elena Predescu

By Roxana Șipoș and Elena Predescu

Conduct disorder (CD) is a matter of societal concern because of the significant burden for the patient, family and immediate environment and the strong associations with school failure, disrupted peer and family relationships, excessive risk-taking and addictive behaviors. The economic costs of aggressive and antisocial behavior in children and adolescents are huge. The mechanisms that lead individuals to adopt such behaviors have been defined and approached from various perspectives. Our purpose was to assess the emotional distress, irrational beliefs, emotion regulation strategies and callousness, uncaring, unemotional traits in a sample of adolescents diagnosed with conduct disorder and to investigate the relationship between them. The adolescents with conduct disorder had a low level of emotional distress and negative dysfunctional emotions. Girls reported a higher level of emotional distress than boys and significantly lower positive emotions. We found significant correlations between the emotional distress reported by the adolescents and their irrational cognitions. The suppression and reassessment strategies did not register values above those of the general population. No significant relation was found between emotional distress and the emotional regulation strategies reappraisal and suppression. The use of suppression related significantly with callousness, uncaring, and unemotional traits. The reappraisal coping strategy related significantly only with uncaring trait, the relation being negative. Research findings from different areas correlated with pathology may improve current therapies (i.e., including emotion regulation training in individualized intervention protocol) or help to develop new ones.

Part of the book: Psychopathy