Nine Year Old Psychopath
Can You Call A Nine Year Old A Psychopath? A psychopath is someone who is callous and someone that has no concern for others. Based on the New York Times article “Can you call a nine-year old a psychopath” by Jennifer Kahn, it is difficult to determine whether you can truly be judged a psychopath or not as a child. We like to automatically put a label on people who are a little bit off center from the rest of us whether there is something really wrong with them or not. This is hard for the kid growing up knowing they are being judged so a lot of them act out making it worse than what it truly is. Take Michael for example. He is a nine year old by in the article who starts acting out after his parents bring a new baby into the family. They
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try over and over to help him but the diagnosis just doesn’t seem to be right. It’s hard to tell at the age of nine if the child is just acting or if it is something serious so you have to deal with it in the best way possible without affecting the child for the rest of their life. With not knowing exactly what is wrong you can do a trial and error since he is so young it hopefully will be taken care of before the time it is too late and is out into the full category of being label a psychopath.
Many studies have been developed in trying to identify psychopaths at a young age are likely to be used in the future in ways that may have serious implications for youths in delinquency and criminal cases.
In this regard, and because the concept and measurement of psychopathy have been developed in reference to adults, there is reason to be concerned about potential developmental sources of false positives when measuring psychopathic traits in juvenile offenders. I don’t think it’s fair to put that label on a nine year old. They are still learning and they may have a little grasp on the way they need to act but they still have those moments, I’m eighteen and I know I still do. There are so many things out there now that someone could be. You can go to the doctor with just one symptom of something and you automatically have ADD, ADHA, or whatever it may be. That is hard and may be embarrassing for some people but most of all they just put it into most people’s heads. Granted some kids do need medicine but also a lot of the parents just don’t want to deal with their kids when they act out so they go and get them medicine. Although Kahn doesn’t state whether Michael was labeled as a psychopath or not I don’t think that you should be able to tell a nine year old that they have a condition that they have to deal with for the rest of their lives and take medicine in the time being as
well.
try over and over to help him but the diagnosis just doesn’t seem to be right. It’s hard to tell at the age of nine if the child is just acting or if it is something serious so you have to deal with it in the best way possible without affecting the child for the rest of their life. With not knowing exactly what is wrong you can do a trial and error since he is so young it hopefully will be taken care of before the time it is too late and is out into the full category of being label a psychopath.
Many studies have been developed in trying to identify psychopaths at a young age are likely to be used in the future in ways that may have serious implications for youths in delinquency and criminal cases.
In this regard, and because the concept and measurement of psychopathy have been developed in reference to adults, there is reason to be concerned about potential developmental sources of false positives when measuring psychopathic traits in juvenile offenders. I don’t think it’s fair to put that label on a nine year old. They are still learning and they may have a little grasp on the way they need to act but they still have those moments, I’m eighteen and I know I still do. There are so many things out there now that someone could be. You can go to the doctor with just one symptom of something and you automatically have ADD, ADHA, or whatever it may be. That is hard and may be embarrassing for some people but most of all they just put it into most people’s heads. Granted some kids do need medicine but also a lot of the parents just don’t want to deal with their kids when they act out so they go and get them medicine. Although Kahn doesn’t state whether Michael was labeled as a psychopath or not I don’t think that you should be able to tell a nine year old that they have a condition that they have to deal with for the rest of their lives and take medicine in the time being as
well.