This video answers the question: What is the association between child abuse and neglect and antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy? Antisocial personality disorder is an official mental health disorder and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, but psychopathy is really an area that's studied that's similar to antisocial personality disorder. Childhood maltreatment (emotional, physical, sexual abuse, neglect) has been studied with its relationship to mental disorders a number of times and there is a link that's apparent between childhood maltreatment and anxiety and depression. There is also a relationship to personality disorders and specifically to antisocial personality disorder. With antisocial personality disorder, specifically we're talking about a diagnosis in the DSM, there needs to be at least three symptoms present from the symptom criteria and there's a few other criteria as well. The symptom criteria for antisocial personality disorder include repeatedly engaging in behavior that violates social norms, lying impulsivity, irritability and aggressiveness, disregarding the safety of others, irresponsibility, and lack of remorse. We also see three other symptom criteria: an individual must be 18 years of age or older, they must have had symptoms of conduct disorder before the age of 15, and the behavior from the symptom criteria can't exclusively occur during the course of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Depending on the research we look at, we know that about 70 - 80%t of male prisoners meet the criteria for antisocial personality, but only 15 – 25% meet the criteria for what we refer to as psychopathy. Psychopathy is not a mental disorder, but it's an area that's studied and really psychopathy has a complex relationship with antisocial personality disorder. In general, what we see is some of the antisocial characteristics from antisocial personality disorder are present and psychopathy, like being reckless and there are other characteristics that are added. It's similar to antisocial personality disorder, but there are a few extra characteristics we look for including grandiosity, callousness, shallow affect, and pathological lying. In general, we would say that almost all individuals who would qualify as having psychopathy would have antisocial personality disorder, but many individuals who have antisocial personality disorder would not qualify as having psychopathy. We know that both of these constructs (antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy) are linked to childhood maltreatment.
Study cited in this video:
Dargis, M., Newman, J., & Koenigs, M. (2016). Clarifying the link between childhood abuse history and psychopathic traits in adult criminal offenders. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 7(3), 221-228. doi:10.1037/per0000147
