Using a Novel Emotional Skills Module to Enhance Empathic Responding for a Child With Conduct Disorder With Limited Prosocial Emotions

Children with conduct problems benefit less from empirically supported interventions for disruptive behaviors when callous-unemotional (CU) traits (i.e., lack of empathy/guilt) are also present. Traditional gold-standard interventions for disruptive behavior disorders that focus primarily on improving parenting skills fail to address the core deficits in emotional processing and empathic responding unique to children with co-occurring conduct problems and CU traits (CP + CU). This case study presents a follow-up of the treatment of a young boy with severe disruptive behavior and pronounced CU traits using a novel, brief adjunctive treatment called Coaching and Rewarding Emotional Skills (CARES). Findings (a) indicate short-term improvements in empathic responding and emotion recognition with CARES and (b) provide preliminary support for supplementing parent training with a brief adjunctive intervention to improve socio-emotional behavior and CU traits. Novel targeted interventions for children with CP + CU are critically needed given their poor prognosis and long-term impairment.