Assessing the child's safety is an essential first step that determines whether future intervention can take place in the family unit or whether the child should be removed to a safe situation. Interventions may include psychosocial support services for the family unit (including financial or domestic aid, housing and social work support), psychotherapeutic interventions (including treating parents for mental illness, family therapy, individual therapy), education (including training in basic parenting skills and child development), and monitoring of the child's safety within the family environment In 2005 the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry laid down guidelines (devised by N.W. Boris and C.H. Zeanah) based on its published parameters for the diagnosis and treatment of<unk> . Recommendations in the guidelines include the following: # "The most important intervention for young children diagnosed with<unk>  and who lack an<unk>  to a discriminated caregiver is for the clinician to advocate for providing the child with an emotionally available<unk>  figure." # "Although the diagnosis of<unk>  is based on symptoms displayed by the child, assessing the caregiver's attitudes toward and perceptions about the child is important for treatment selection." # "Children with<unk>  are presumed to have grossly disturbed internal models for relating to others. After ensuring that the child is in a safe and stable placement, effective<unk>  treatment must focus on creating positive interactions with caregivers." # "Children who meet criteria for<unk>  and who display aggressive and oppositional behavior require adjunctive (additional) treatments." Mainstream prevention programs and treatment approaches for<unk>  difficulties or disorders for infants and younger children are based on<unk>  theory and concentrate on increasing the responsiveness and sensitivity of the caregiver, or if that is not possible, placing the child with a different caregiver. These approaches are mostly in the process of being evaluated. The programs invariably include a detailed assessment of the<unk>  status or caregiving responses of the adult caregiver as<unk>  is a two-way process involving<unk>  behavior and caregiver response. Some of these treatment or prevention programs are specifically aimed at foster carers rather than parents, as the<unk>  behaviors of infants or children with<unk>  difficulties often do not elicit appropriate caregiver responses. Approaches include "Watch, wait and wonder," manipulation of sensitive responsiveness, modified "Interaction Guidance", "Clinician-Assisted Videofeedback Exposure Sessions (CAVES)", "Preschool Parent Psychotherapy", "Circle of Security",<unk>  and Biobehavioral Catch-up" (ABC), the New Orleans Intervention, and parent–child psychotherapy. Other treatment methods include Developmental, Individual-difference, and Relationship-based therapy (DIR, also referred to as Floor Time) by Stanley Greenspan, although DIR is primarily directed to treatment of pervasive developmental disorders. The relevance of these approaches to intervention with fostered and adopted children with<unk>  or older children with significant histories of maltreatment is unclear.<unk>  therapy The terms<unk>  disorder,<unk>  problems, and<unk>  therapy, although increasingly used, have no clear, specific, or consensus definitions. However, the terms and therapies often are applied to children who are maltreated, particularly those in the foster care, kinship care, or adoption systems, and related populations such as children adopted internationally from orphanages. Outside the mainstream programs is a form of treatment generally known as<unk>  therapy, a subset of techniques (and accompanying novel diagnosis) for supposed<unk>  disorders including<unk> . These<unk>  disorders" use diagnostic criteria or symptom lists different from criteria under ICD-10 or DSM-IV-TR, or to<unk>  behaviors. Sufferers of<unk>  disorder" are said to lack empathy and remorse. Treatments of this pseudoscientific disorder are called<unk>  therapy". In general, these therapies are aimed at adopted or fostered children with a view to creating<unk>  in these children to their new caregivers. The theoretical base is broadly a combination of regression and catharsis, accompanied by parenting methods which emphasize obedience and parental control. There is considerable criticism of this form of treatment and diagnosis as it is largely unvalidated and has developed outside the scientific mainstream. There is little or no evidence base and techniques vary from non-coercive therapeutic work to more extreme forms of physical, confrontational and coercive techniques, of which the best known are holding therapy, rebirthing, rage-reduction and the Evergreen model. These forms of the therapy may well involve physical restraint, the deliberate provocation of rage and anger in the child by physical and verbal means including deep tissue massage, aversive tickling, enforced eye contact and verbal confrontation, and being pushed to revisit earlier trauma. Critics maintain that these therapies are not within the<unk>  paradigm, are potentially abusive, and are antithetical to<unk>  theory. The APSAC Taskforce Report of 2006 notes that many of these therapies concentrate on changing the child rather than the caregiver. Children may be described as "RADs", "Radkids" or "Radishes" and dire predictions may be made as to their supposedly violent futures if they are not treated with<unk>  therapy. The Mayo Clinic, a well known U.S. non-profit medical practice and medical research group, cautions against consulting with mental health providers who promote these types of methods and offer evidence to support their techniques; to date, this evidence base is not published within reputable medical or mental health journals.
Reactive attachment disorder
Autism
Externalizing disorder
Immature personality disorder
Disinhibited attachment disorder
Internalizing disorder
Spectrum disorder
Haltlose personality disorder