Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Psychological Interventions on Callous-Unemotional Traits of Children with Conduct Problems: A Systematic Review

Children with conduct problems and callous-unemotional traits form a separate group who exhibit persistent, widespread, and more severe patterns of delinquent, antisocial, and aggressive behaviors and are generally assumed to be resistant to therapeutic interventions and improvement. Accordingly, this study seeks to answer these questions: 1- What interventions have been used for this group so far? 2- Have the interventions effectively reduced this group's problems? 3- What factors have influenced the effectiveness of the interventions?

A systematic review was used in this research. Articles between 2000 and 2021 with the keywords Callous-unemotional traits, intervention, treatment, and therapy were reviewed in PubMed، ProQuest، ،PsycINFo sciencedirect، Google scholar & Springer databases. They were reviewed using the Prisma guidelines and 17 articles were selected according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria.

The results of this study showed that the interventions that have been carried out so far for the group of children with conduct problems and callous-unemotional traits are in three categories: interventions based on behavioral approach, based on parent-child interaction therapy. And they are divided based on the training of individual, cognitive, and social skills. Ten studies have reported low effectiveness and seven studies have reported appropriate effectiveness. Among these, the interventions based on behavioral approaches were the least effective, the interventions based on parent-child interaction were the most effective, and skills training was effective only in combination with the parent education program.

In general, the response to treatment of children with conduct problems and callous-unemotional traits compared to those without callous-unemotional traits was low, and among different interventions, behavioral interventions had a more insufficient improvement. Innovative programs focusing on the warm and emotional relationship between parent and child have responded well.