Search

The essence of psychopathic personality disorder is considered to consist of emotional deviations, the most central ones of which being the lack of feelings of guilt and empathy along with impoverishment of experiencing emotions. The interest in the occurrence of these callous-unemotional features in children and adolescents has increased over the past few years. According to the most recent studies, parental interventions promoting a positive, warm, and attentive parenting and interaction style are effective in the treatment of children having a conduct disorder accompanied by callous-unemotional features.

Early intervention may postpone or even prevent the onset of psychosis and relieve symptom-related anxiety. Support and follow-up observation requires up-to-date knowledge of the nature of the risk symptoms of psychosis and of the therapy of the person having symptoms within the healthcare system. Healthcare professionals should be aware of the limitations of present research information in order to assess the correct magnitude of the risk of psychosis. Although a person assigned by current methods to the risk group presents a higher than tenfold risk compared with the rest of the population, improvement of prognostic accuracy remains as the central research issue.