Word: asp
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...since the mid-1800s (when it was called "moral insanity"), and antisocial personality disorder has been listed in the DSM since 1968. Yet surprisingly little research has been done on it. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, only $3 million was spent last year for research on ASP, and $31 million was spent on its childhood predecessor, conduct disorder. Yet $132 million was devoted to schizophrenia...
...reason for the resistance is that ASP is still not universally accepted by psychologists as a diagnosis. Some critics dismiss it as a category so broad as to be useless. "It's used for everyone from the person who cheats on his income taxes to Attila the Hun," says Fred Berlin, associate professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins medical school. "It's a label masquerading as an explanation." Others wonder whether the term is simply a catchall psychological description for people who are habitual criminals. Yet proponents argue that the disorder's core ingredients--a lifelong pattern of behavior...
...from her purse, torturing animals, driving drunk and making violent threats against classmates. Typical boyish rebellion? "There was a difference," Kathleen says. "I didn't sense any real remorse. He would use his charm to overcome my anger." Now she has accepted that her son--a lawyer with diagnosed ASP who changes jobs regularly, terrorizes former girlfriends and accrues credit-card debt--probably won't change...
...search for causes of antisocial personality disorder gives rise to the usual debate between nature and nurture. Studies have found that insufficient bonding between infants and mothers is a strong indicator for ASP and that people with ASP often come from abusive or impoverished home environments. But increasingly, research is focusing on biological factors. Studies have shown that identical twins have a dramatically higher chance of sharing ASP than do fraternal twins. Adrian Raine, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, has found that the brains of people with ASP look different from those of the rest...
...disorder be treated? Though certain medications, like Depakote, curb individual symptoms like aggression and impulsiveness, there have been no drug trials specifically for ASP. Fonagy claims intensive psychotherapy and parent training can help. But researchers say that signs of ASP often show up by age four or five, and that if the behavior is not caught and dealt with before adolescence, there's little hope of making significant change. New York City psychoanalyst Leon Hoffman points out another problem: people suffering from ASP are difficult to get into therapy because they typically don't think anything is wrong with them...