Could a child be a psychopath? To many people it’s debatable, as Psychopathy is a controversial label. Yet, with items in the news including last week’s story on a 12-year-old stabbing a 9-year-old to death in an incident in Michigan, perhaps it’s time we ask the question.
The average cost to keep an inmate in American prisons incarcerated is $25,838 annually,(says the Federal community correction centers.) Roughly one fourth of prisoners meet the criteria for “Psychopathy.” What if we could diagnose children with these disorders early on, and stop them from growing up to commit crimes?
I am no expert, rather an avid researcher with a lot of interest for psychology and Psychopathy. Take this simply as research and opinion.
Many studies are trying to get across the working of the psychopathic brain, and of course; distinguishing Psychopathy from other early mental illness. Foremost, we are clarifying if and how a child could be born this way so we could diagnose, and treat the children.
Psychopathy is what you would call a personality disorder, characterized by interpersonal, affective and behavioral characteristics. Most of these include minor to severe antisocial tendencies, such as lack of remorse and empathy, deceit, and manipulation.
It’s difficult to diagnose a young child as a psychopath, mostly because their brains are still developing, and even “pre-psychopathic” is a controversial label. Some people believe you cannot diagnose a child simply because their minds are still developing, and their lives are filled with moral development between rights and wrongs, living and dying, their whole lives.
Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of “moral development” was that in childhood to early adulthood the individual developed moral, interpersonal, and universal understanding.
Childhood violence can lead to more Psychopathic traits: In the 2011 National Surveys of Children’s Exposure to Violence nearly one half (41 percent) of children were physically assaulted within the previous year, 55 percent said they were assaulted in their lifetime, and 22 percent witnessed violence in their own homes in the previous year.
David Lykken was a behavioral geneticist and professor of psychiatry and psychology until his demise in 2006. He believed that Psychopaths need to have both something wrong with their brains and typically another factor, particularly child abuse, to complete their development of Psychopathy.
There are definite factors that affect whether or not a child will grow to be violent, or damaged. Pre-natal trauma, post-natal and attachment and developmental trauma are huge factors.
However, there are plenty of people who end up characterized as psychopaths that had decent, if not rewarding childhoods. Some children are born very callous, and completely incapable of morality throughout childhood and their lives. This is where the research of brain abnormalities can become applicable.
From sources in London, brain studies were reviewed, for people of antisocial or psychopathic tendencies. Nigel Blackwood M.D., from the Kings College Institute of Psychiatry in London is the lead author of the study.
“Using MRI scans we found that psychopaths had structural brain abnormalities in key areas in their ‘social brains’ compared to those who just had ASPD,” he said.
The study found that psychopathic offenders showed significantly reduced grey matter volumes in the ‘‘anterior rostral prefrontal cortex’’ and “temporal poles.’’
‘‘These areas are important in understanding other people’s emotions and intentions, and are activated when people think about moral behavior,’ the researchers noted. Damages to these areas would result in lack of understanding of others feelings, and their own emotions, and lack of moral conception and shame, and/or fear.
Whether or not it is a real disorder to you, analyzing it is a real cause, and learning more about our children’s brains would help us better understand broader issues. We need to do it not to satisfy our curiosity, but for the sake of children and youth. It’s a matter of morality to seek and decipher the code of our kid’s conscience and minds, to better recognize what’s going on when things go awry.
David Bortolotto is an Enka High student who served as a summer intern in the Citizen-Times newsroom. He describes himself as a young man “with a fascination in all fields of psychology and writing.’’