Conduct disorder is frequently associated with adverse psychosocial environments, including unsatisfactory family relationships and failure at school, and is more commonly noted in boys. Diagnostic Guidelines Judgements concerning the presence of conduct disorder should take into account the child's developmental level. Any one of these categories, if marked, is sufficient for the diagnosis, but isolated dissocial acts are not. Exclusion criteria include uncommon but serious underlying conditions such as schizophrenia, mania, pervasive developmental disorder, hyperkinetic disorder, and depression. This diagnosis is not recommended unless the duration of the behaviour described above has been 6 months or longer.
Conduct disorder overlaps with other conditions.
There may be stealing from the home, often specifically focused on the money or possessions of one or two particular individuals. This may be accompanied by deliberately destructive behaviour, again often focused on specific family members such as breaking of toys or ornaments, tearing of clothes, carving on furniture, or destruction of prized possessions. Diagnostic Guidelines Diagnosis requires that there be no significant conduct disturbance outside the family setting and that the child's social relationships outside the family be within the normal range. In most cases these family-specific conduct disorders will have arisen in the context of some form of marked disturbance in the child's relationship with one or more members of the nuclear family. In some cases, for example, the disorder may have arisen in relation to conflict with a newly arrived step-parent.