Knowledge and attitudes about conduct disorder of professionals working with young people: The influence of occupation and direct and indirect experience

Background: Knowledge and attitudes of professionals both pose a potential barrier to diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. However, knowledge and attitudes about conduct disorder in professionals working with young people are poorly understood. Little is known about the impact of occupation, direct and indirect (training and education) experience, or the interrelationship between knowledge and attitudes.

Methods: We conducted an online survey of 58 participants, including Psychology Staff, Teaching Staff, Care Staff, and Other Non-Clinical Staff. A questionnaire comprising three subscales (causes, treatments, and characteristics) measured knowledge. A thermometer scale measured global attitudes. Open-ended response measures were used to measure four attitude components: stereotypic beliefs (about characteristics), symbolic beliefs (about the holder’s traditions), affect, and past behaviour. Primary analysis explored the impact of occupation, direct experience, and indirect experience on outcome measures. A secondary exploratory analysis was conducted to explore the relationship between knowledge and attitudes.

Results: Psychology Staff had significantly more favourable global attitudes (F = 0.49, p = 0.01) and symbolic beliefs (F = 0.57, p = 0.02) towards those with conduct disorder than Teaching Staff; there were no other significant group differences in attitudes. Psychology staff had more knowledge about conduct disorder than other groups, though the differences were not significant. Direct and indirect experience were associated with greater knowledge (direct: d = 0.97, p = 0.002; indirect d = 0.86, p = 0.004) and favourable global attitudes (direct: d = 1.12, p < 0.001; indirect: d = 0.68, p = 0.02). Secondary exploratory analyses revealed significant positive correlations between: all knowledge variables with global attitudes; total knowledge with past behaviour; and affect and knowledge of causes with past behaviour.

Conclusions: Psychology-based staff may have more favourable attitudes towards children with conduct disorder than teachers, primarily due to direct and indirect experience with the disorder. Our sample may have been too small to detect overall or within-group effects of knowledge or attitudes, however exploratory analyses showing a positive correlation between knowledge and attitudes suggest education may be critical in supporting teachers and other groups in their approaches to this challenging group of young people.