Attachment Disorder: Attachment Disorder DSM IV Criteria

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Attachment Disorder (RAD): What is Attachment Disorder?
Attachment Disorder: Attachment Disorder DSM IV Criteria

Attachment Disorder: Attachment Disorder DSM IV Criteria

December 29, 2011 at 14:44

Attachment Disorder: Attachment Disorder DSM IV Criteria

The following is the DSM-IV-TR criteria for Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD):

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A. Markedly disturbed and developmentally inappropriate social relatedness in most contexts, beginning before age five years, as evidenced by either (1) or (2):

(1)persistent failure to initiate or respond in a developmentally appropriate fashion to most social interactions, as manifest by excessively inhibited, hypervigilant, or highly ambivalent and contradictory responses (e.g., the child may respond to caregivers with a mixture of approach, avoidance, and resistance to comforting, or may exhibit frozen watchfulness)

(2)diffuse attachments as manifest by indiscriminate sociability with marked inability to exhibit appropriate selective attachments (e.g., excessive familiarity with relative strangers or lack of selectivity in choice of attachment figures)

B. The disturbance in Criterion A is not accounted for solely by developmental delay (as in Mental Retardation) and does not meet criteria for Pervasive Development Disorder.

C. Pathogenic care as evidenced by at least one of the following;

(l) persistent disregard for the child’s basic emotional needs for comfort, simulation, and affection

(2) persistent disregard for the child’s basic physical needs

(3) repeated changes of primary caregiver that prevent formation of stable attachments (e.g., frequents changes in foster care)

D. There is a presumption that the care in Criterion C is responsible for the behavior in Criterion A (e.g., the disturbances in Criterion A began following the pathogenic care in Criterion C)