The DSM-5 Limited Prosocial Emotions subtype of Conduct Disorder in incarcerated male and female juvenile delinquents

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to analyze the relevance of the DSM-5's Conduct Disorder new Limited Prosocial Emotions (CD LPE) specifier in incarcerated juvenile delinquents. A sample of 201 males and 98 females from the Juvenile Detention Centers managed by the Portuguese Ministry of Justice diagnosed with Conduct Disorder (CD) was used. Results showed that male juvenile delinquents with the CD LPE specifier scored higher on callous-unemotional traits (CU), general psychopathic traits, psychopathy taxon membership, self-reported delinquency, and crime seriousness, and lower on prosocial behavior and social desirability, while female juvenile delinquents with the CD LPE specifier scored higher on callous-unemotional traits (CU) and general psychopathic traits, and lower on prosocial behavior. Significant associations for both genders were found between the CD LPE specifier and age of crime onset and first problems with the law

Empathic skills and theory of mind in female adolescents with conduct disorder

“…Research has also described that these adolescents present slower emotional processing, which limits the decoding of such emotions and generates a delay in the empathic responses needed to understand and affectively bond with the emotional and mental states of others. [9][10][11] Previous findings, supported by clinical evidence, proposed the CUT specifier for CD subtypes that involve absence of guilt and lack of empathic concern for others. 12 According to this, women with CD and limitations in abilities related to the theory of mind (ToM) have important psychopathic traits and blunted prosocial responses, which involve a lack of concern for the negative consequences caused by their actions and low empathic concern.…”

“…12 According to this, women with CD and limitations in abilities related to the theory of mind (ToM) have important psychopathic traits and blunted prosocial responses, which involve a lack of concern for the negative consequences caused by their actions and low empathic concern. [11][12][13] Hence, empirical evidence shows that deficits in emotional and empathic processing and in ToM abilities are predictive of antisocial conduct during childhood and adolescence. Specifically, empathy has been described as an inhibitory response to aggressive and antisocial conducts that may lead to prosocial behaviors, as it may have an impact over the abilities to feel (affective component) and understand (cognitive component) emotional and mental states and, therefore, to experience guilt or embarrassment when one's actions affect others negatively.…”

Taxometric analyses and predictive accuracy of callous-unemotional traits regarding quality of life and behavior problems in non-conduct disorder diagnoses

“…However, research applying the DSM-5 criteria for the specifier of CU traits is sparse and the value of using a cut-off of two out of four criteria to fulfill the LPE specifier CD has been debated. Several studies show that boys with CD and meeting criteria for the LPE specifier present more severe antisocial behavior and decreased prosocial behavior (McMahon et al, 2010;Kahn et al, 2012;Pardini et al, 2012;Colins and Andershed, 2015;Kimonis et al, 2015;Pechorro et al, 2015), with similar findings for girls (Pardini et al, 2012;Colins and Andershed, 2015). However, recent studies find limited usefulness of the cut-off score for the criteria of the LPE specifier in detained youths (Colins and Vermeiren, 2013;Colins, 2016;Colins et al, 2017), in former refugees (Latzman et al, 2016), and in conduct-disordered youths with substance abuse (Sakai et al, 2016).…”

The DSM-5 with Limited Prosocial Emotions Specifier for Conduct Disorder: a Systematic Literature Review

“…1 PRISMA Flow Diagram * Papers were predominantly excluded for review purposes because CU measures were not used to assess the DSM-5 specifier symptoms. Other reasons were, for example, the use of CU measures that only enable to assess three of the four LPE specifier criteria (Colins 2016;Colins and Vermeiren 2013;Jambroes et al 2016), the lack of formal comparison of CD + LPE with CD Only youth (McMahon et al 2010), or lack of information about the assessment procedure followed to determine a CD diagnosis (Pechorro et al 2015); ** Two papers were identified after checking the references Sakai et al 2017), whilst three papers were identified by advance online publication explorations (Byrd et al 2018;Sethi et al 2018;Oldenhof et al 2018); *** Three of the five aforementioned potentially relevant papers were not included for review purposes because no measures of CD were used (Byrd et al 2018), and because youth who did not met criteria for CD also enrolled in the study whilst analyses were not run separately for youth with a CD diagnosis (Oldenhof et al 2018;Sakai et al 2017); **** Two papers used largely overlapping samples (Colins et al 2017;Van Damme et al 2016), but focused on a different research question, and therefore added significant incremental information to the review. Consequently, both papers were included for review purposes but will be treated as one and the same study magnitude of the significant group differences.…”