202. The Sinister Trifecta: Conduct Disorder, ASPD & Psychopathy

That's funny. It is Patage's. We were shopping last night out at the Farmer's Market and eating at one of the restaurants and this woman at the table turned to me and said, where are you from. You're not from here, And it's like nobody has commented on my accent in a long time. So like I lived down the street. Baby, Literally I'm literally two blocks from your room.

And then we've also started the process of planning a summer tour with our favorite tour guide Chris, who is Off the Hook fantastic, and this time, instead of being in downtown Los Angeles, we're going to be on the famous, the fabulous and quite formidable Sunset Strip. There's a lot of stuff to talk about on the Sunset Strip.

of course his solo podcast, The Peripheral. We always have great discussions with Justin in person, and the last time that we were all together, we decided it's worth taking a look back at Matthew Perry's death and really drilling down and looking at the cause of death along with the stigma that comes from deaths where substances are involved, and then even peeling back another layer of looking at the ways in which we as consumers and the media

try to understand these deaths when a celebrity is involved versus a non celebrity, which we really just don't ever hear about it. Touched on so many poignant topics. I think it's really becoming one of my favorite behind the couch conversations we've ever had. And we've had some really great responses.

people riled up. People want to get very concrete about this very very complex issue, you know, and it requires critical thinking in the same way that really being an informed consumer of true crime content really should require us to be critical thinkers about where did this person come from? Again, as I always say, because I always go back to wicked, was she born this way? Or did the world kind

of do this to her? Or what's the lens that we're looking through from week to week, from year to year or decade to decade as we look back on some of these things. So, yeah, thank you for mentioning that. And if you haven't had a chance to listen to it, Folks, please go back and give it a listen or give it a watch on YouTube.

the backstory and blah blah blah, But I digress. We're not talking about Wicked. We are talking about dunda dun

du attachment disorders and the intersection of personality disorders. So, folks, over the past seven and a half years, we've spoken pretty expansively about this intersection between personality disorders and crime and whether or not those personality disorders are full blown or just certain flavors yeah, or like an ish of a ish like you know, kind of like a Lacroix fizzy water, right, Yeah, you know, you're drinking a lemon fizzy water and it's like you're drinking bubbles and somebody

is whispering lemon from two blocks away, right exactly. But those flavors can actually have a huge impact on the way that we as individuals interact with the world around us. And of course we always want to refer to the most recent and validated research on our particular areas of work and interest and discussion here on the show. So we're following up on our previous episode about attachment disorders and how they're entangled with so many of the behaviors

and the presentations of personality disorders. If you haven't had a chance to listen to that two part episode, because of course we over researched and we just did so much, we couldn't burden people with a three hour episode, please go back and get that under your belt before diving.

documented ASPD traits including aggression and emotional detachment. But many wouldn't necessarily immediately assume that a wealthy financial adviser would fit the bill as well. But Bernie Madoff was a white collar criminal who ran the largest Ponzi scheme in known history, exhibiting traits like deception and exploitation. So back to wicked. Is it nature or nurture? Did they emerge

from the womb with full on ASPD wiring? Well, the good thing is that we have clinical research on the relationship between attachment styles and personality disorders, and it has been extensively studied, particularly in the last two decades. What has emerged from this research is significant correlations that expand

and deepen our understanding of psychopathology. The overwhelming drive for criminal activity, there's a direct relationship between the role of early attachment experiences in the development of these conditions, and if you listen to the last episode, you know that disorganized attachment patterns can significantly impair, affect or emotional regulation as well as contribute to the development of personality disorders like ASPD, although borderline personality disorder has also shown to

be quite prominent as well.

path for sure. But when we ponder back on all of the disrupted attachments that we discovered in those episodes episode one ninety nine, no we keep referencing them and also think about personality disorders, it seems obvious that there's a trajectory there and that we need to touch on some other crossovers in diagnosing and phenomenon in forensic psychology and frankly, things that we've been covering since episode two of this podcast when we go all the way back

and look at our first episodes on psychopathy. So let's stick with childhood behavior and parse out conduct disorder first before tying this into an adult personality disorder and beyond. Conduct disorder is a mental health condition that affects children and teens that's characterized by a consistent pattern of aggressive behaviors and actions that harm the well being of others.

Children with conduct disorder also often violate rules and societal norms, and conduct disorder lies on a spectrum of disruptive behavioral disorders, which also includes oppositional defiant disorder, which is something different, but we're going to stay on track here. So again, conduct disorder only affects children and adolescents. It can have early onset before the age of ten, but commonly develops

an adolescents, which is up to nineteen years old. In this case, the condition is more common in male children than female children, and the average age of presentation is ten to twelve years in males and then a little bit later fourteen to sixteen years in females. So conduct disorder affects anywhere between two and ten percent of children

and adolescents in the United States. I think it's important to ask here what is the difference between conduct disorder and personality disorders, just to make sure we're all on the same page. So a personality disorder is a mental health condition that involves long lasting disruptive patterns of thinking as well as behavior as well as mood, and then how that all relates to others, like how is that

impacting negatively impacting the people around them. Most personality disorders begin in the teen years, when obviously personality is further developing and maturing, and as a result, almost all people diagnosed with personality disorders are above the age of eighteen. Traditionally, we don't want to label them prior to that. One exception to this is antisocial personality disorder, in that approximately eighty percent of people with this disorder started to show

symptoms by the age of eleven. So let's put a pin in that we will come back to antisocial personality disorder. But that's the one that we start to see very very early, hence conduct disorder.

Children with conduct disorder tend to be impulsive and difficult to manage, and research has shown that individuals with these traits have abnormalities in the way their brain processes moral decision making, even at the pre high school level. Right, so they're already seeing a very different way of how this child is walking through the world from an early age.

They don't seem to be concerned about the feelings of other people, and many times in retrospect when parents are being interviewed, they will say, I knew something was different about my child. I knew something was off. So the four core behaviors of conduct disorder include aggression towards people in animals or like. The way we use the typical term in diagnostic criteria is violating others basic rights, so violating their bodily autonomy, violating their property, their personal space,

that kind of thing. Point two is destruction of property. Point three is deceiving, lying and or stealing, and point four is serious violation of rules. So signs of aggressive behavior towards other include bullying, physical violence, potentially even with a weapon as a child, verbal fights, threatening, forcing sexual activity, and blaming others for their own behavior, as well as

hurting animals. Going on to that second point we've discussed just now was signs of the destruction of property will include intentionally setting fires and vandalizing or purposely destroying other people's property. Point three, signs of deceiving and lying and stealing would include lying to get a favor or to avoid responsibilities, stealing from individuals or from retail establishments, or going so far as to break into houses or businesses.

And then the signs of the violation of rules would include breaking rules without a clear reason. So part of the development through the teen years is breaking rules. You're learning to be your own individual, but there's usually a reason for it. Well, I wanted to go out, so that's why I snuck out my window. But breaking rules without a clear reason is just it's almost like they're seeking a form of stimulation for an area of feeling

that is just not working. Like other kids also can be exhibited by not going to school, which we call truancy here in the US, running away from home, or frequently breaking any rules set by their parents.

piece of it. And another key component you know we always look holistically when we're doing an assessment is looking at those social relationships, and these individuals tend to have

a difficulty making and maintaining friendships. It is important to note that, like you touched on, occasional rebellious behavior is very common during childhood and adolescens, with studies showing that like fifty to eighty percent of youth engage in some form of something we could label as antisocial behavior during their development, but only a small percentage ever meet the

criteria for disorders like conduct disorder. We're talking like some studies on the low end one point eight percent and then some studies going up onto the high end of like sixteen percent. So the signs and symptoms that lead to the diagnosis of conduct disorder demonstrate a disruptive and repetitive pattern, and the previously described types of actions violate again those rights of others and fall under that category of quote unquote antisocial behavior.

temperament changes, aggression, and the insensitivity to punishment. That's a really big one. Insensitivity to punishment as well as l testosterone levels that are associated with aggression. Traumatic brain injury, seizures, and neurological damage of course can all contribute to aggression as well.

personality disorder. We also sometimes see a home environment that lacks structure and adequate supervision with frequent conflicts between the parents, and then that can lead to maladaptive behavior in the children, which can then go on to be associated with conduct disorder. We also see that in children that are exposed to frequent domestic violence are more likely to develop conduct disorder. And then living in low social and economic environments with

overcrowding and unemployment leads to economic and social stress. With that, I would say that and then coupled with the lack of adequate parenting, can be breeding ground as well for conduct distorts or so we just know that conduct disorder ends up impacting more children living in low economic environments than not. We also see the availability of drugs and increase crime in a child's neighborhood then can increase their

risk of developing conduct disorder. So, having said all that again, it's really important to note that conduct disorder can occur in children from very high functioning quote unquote healthy families that maybe aren't experiencing some of these things as well.

You know, some households just have problems because life throws problems at us, right, But what you will see is that you can see some kids acting out in anger because of the situation they're in that have nothing to do with conduct disorder or have nothing to do with oppositional defiant disorder. You can also see children come from really really adverse situations who go on to be highly highly highly successful people and hyper independent from a very

young age, which is not always a good thing. Success is good, I mean, I'm certainly not going to downplay how good it is to be successful and be able to support your family and maybe increase your quality of lifestyle.

But sometimes we have to take into account that kids that are placed with way too much responsibility and way too many adult activities of daily living before they are developmentally ready for it, they're going to be cash in that check that their parents wrote for them many years later, and that's why a lot of people end up in

therapy actually is trying to disentangle that stuff. So that was just like a little side note I wanted to put in there so that we make sure that we're not shaming families that have situations out of their control. You know, there's the panoply or the spectrum of human behavior and development. It's very very wide and very very complex. Prognosis or the long term outlook for conduct disorder really really depends on how early the condition developed and if

it was treated. So usually the disruptive behaviors of conduct stop during early adulthood, but in about one third of the cases they will continue. In many of these cases will meet the criteria for antisocial personality disorder or certainly, like we were saying, an ish a flavor, a shadow early onset of the condition before ten years of age is associated with a much poor long term prognosis and is strongly associated with a significant decline in school performance.

So again, really important stuff for people out there that are fascinated by true crime and the history of the people who commit these crimes. Looking at that factor, these kypes of behaviors before the age of ten, decline in school performance. Those are things to watch out for. It just means that, like in that moment, the chemicals in their head are creating a storm that's going to have

long term impact on that child's life. Depression and bipolar disorder may also develop in the teen years in early adulthood, and suicidal ideation can be a complication because of these conditions, It's important to get your child immediate medical care if they're talking about or threatening suicide. Don't shut down the conversation. Continue the conversation, let your child know that they are being heard, but also seek outside help.

well as financial struggles and some family dysfunction. Background research and police report suggest that his parents had a strained relationship, and his upbringing lock structure and discipline. Perry exhibited behavioral issues from an early age, engaging in petty crimes and showing some early signs of conduct disorder.

and concealed himself in the laundry room. Sandra Stottler, Adam's mother, opened the back door, Perry emerged from his hiding place and shot her in the side. As she fell and attempted to rise, Perry then shot her again, fatally wounding her. Perry and Burkette then loaded her body into the back of the truck and dumped the body in a nearby lake, Attempting to hide their crime. The two immediately left to pick up Kristin Willis, another friend from work, and then

returned to the Stotler home. Later, Adam Stottler and his friend Jeremy Richardson arrived Unaware of what had transpired, Burkett and Perry lured them into a wooded area under the false pretense that a friend had been shot and needed help. Once they were deep in the woods, Burkett shot and killed both Adam and Jeremy. The group then returned to the Stottler home before heading to a bar to continue their night.

trouble again. While driving a stolen car, he again attempted to evade law enforcement, but ended up crashing into a deputy Sheriff's vehicle. Their final escape attempt ended with both men being arrested while hiding in a nearby apartment complex. The shotgun used in Sandra Stotler's murder was discovered at the scene, along with forensic evidence linking Perry to the crime.

twenty ten. His accomplice, Jason Burkett, was tried separately, convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison. So this particular example really does high light light that not following the rules, impulsivity, lack of judgment, lack of insight

into what's going to happen. As we've talked about on this show before, when people engage in high speed chases, there's one of maybe a few things one is drugs may be involved, Like they may be so impaired by the use of drugs that they're really not thinking it through, or they know they're at the end of their rope and that there's no choice left, so why not turn it into like sort of a shot for glory, Or they actually think that they may be able to get away,

so that lack of sort of intellectual functioning in that moment they're actually getting high. It takes so much to get a person with the wiring for ASPD to get them stimulated in the way that you or I might be able to get stimulated from something that we find enjoyable. They will go to these extreme ends without insight or judgment into what the consequences are going to be.

conduct disorder. If you know, we want to frame it that way, there's not that much difference between conduct disorder and ASPD, and in fact, conduct disorder is essentially a point criteria for ASPD. There needs to be evidence of conduct disorder before the age of fifteen for somebody to meet full criteria for antisocial personality disorder, along of course, with the pervasive pattern of deviating from social norms on their own and then the functional impairment that that disorder

causes to the adult's life. But it's estimated to affect between point six percent and three point six percent of adults, and it's three times more common among men than women, and individuals with antisocial personality disorder often also have co occurring mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and or substance use disorders.

describe individuals who engaged in antisocial behaviors. Now we're starting in the nineteenth century, although you can go back as far as like a great example is a book The Killer of Little Shepherds is a great example of something that was happening in the sixteenth century, you know, which is frightening. But the research and the naming and the

nomenclature really started around this time. So Richard believed these individuals lacked a moral compass, and that in itself has continued to be a key characteristic of what we now find and call antisocial personality disorder. So it's a complex disorder that's been difficult for psychiatrists and psychologists to really fully understand. However, doctor Daniel Goodwin and doctor Samuel Hughes

provided a clear definition in their book Psychiatric Diagnosis. They described ASPD as a persistent pattern of socially irresponsible, exploitative, and guiltless behavior that affects many areas of life, including family, school, work, and relationships. But that description is just an illustration of symptoms which may actually arise from a number of complex

and interwoven factors. The symptoms of ASPD exist on a spectrum, ranging from relatively mild behaviors like lying and cheating to much more severe actions like violent crime, including rape and murder.

and irresponsibility. Another point, as we mentioned just a little bit ago, is they have to be eighteen years or older and showed signs of conduct disorder before the age of fifteen. We also know that one of the criteria, which is pretty common, is that these symptoms must not be caused by basically some other diagnosis and specifically here

schizophrenia or mania. So again, ASPD is the only personality disorder in the DSM five that has that age requirement, which really reflects its chronic nature and the early developmental roots.

significant affect issues and just quality of life issues. And because of the insurance this family had, the child was sent to a company here in California that is across the state and they do nothing but psychiatric care, no therapy, just psychiatric care and it's all telehealth. Oh jeez, so already you can see some problems and the mom. By the time I was talking to mom, Mom was just in tears, Like we were talking to this clinician and I'm not going to say what discipline they are, but

they were a medical clinician doing these diagnoses. And within ten minutes of the call talking to the child, the child who was under the age of twelve, the clinician closed his DSM and said, well, I don't have an adolescent DSM. I don't have that version, just have the adult. But clearly you have borderline personality disorder what.

you're supposed to know this, and what harmed you? And I mean, the person was very surprised because apparently nobody had ever called them on their bullshit. But again, this is an illustration of how careful we have to be with diagnostic labels, right, And that's why they really have significant and substantial research that has made conduct disorder clearly to be a factor that has to be present for a real diagnosis of ASPD and none of the other personality disorders have it.

avoid working with them altogether. So outside of forensic psychology, in the prison system or jail system, ASPD is often overlooked by clinicians, which is really concerning a clinician's discomfort with particular traits or behaviors may make that clinician less likely to notice them occurring in non obvious ways, and that's a problem. We can't avoid these things as clinicians

and be thoroughly ready to give the public treatment. And despite being a relatively small percentage of the population, individuals with ASPD have a high significant societal impact. So here's this sliver of the population that really can impact the community at large, and we've got a bunch of clinicians that are like, oh no, I don't work with that,

I don't deal with that. And studies showed that thirty point six percent to eighty four percent of prison populations meet the criteria for ASPD, with US estimates averaging around fifty percent within the prison system. But wait, there's more. As we've said many times on multiple episodes over the years.

The most important research regarding personality disorders has emerged over the past one to two decades, and this is where our understanding of the disorder extended beyond the pretty rigid framework of nurture into a very complex nexus of both environment and genetics.

can contribute to a predisposition towards antisocial actions and risky behavior. So, as far as the genetics go, just super interesting to look at. Some of these studies and always fascinating studies on twins and families indicate a significant genetic component to antisocial behavior, suggesting certain genes may predispose individuals to this aggressive or impulsive tendencies and actions. And then when it comes to the prefrontal cortex, research often points to reduced

activity or some structural abnormalities in the prefrontal cortex. That region is really crucial for your decision making, impulsivity, moral reasoning. So we're either finding that some things just don't light up or the structure is actually different. And then we have the amygdala deep in the middle of your brain, and this area is associated with processing emotions, and dysfunction can lead to difficulty in recognizing or responding to others distress,

again potentially contributing to antisocial behavior. And then we have the anterior singular cortex, and this plays a role in conflict monitoring and decision making. And so when you have abnormalities in this region, we find that there's more impulsive behavior related to that.

the wiring, but you cauck them on the head. In these particular areas, a number of times lesions can form and then cause a personality change later in life. So there is the structure issue, but let's look at also on top of it, this layer of chemical dysfunction. So when we look in sort of the category of neurotransmitters, serotonin, low serotonin levels have been linked to aggression and impulsivity,

potentially contributing to antisocial behavior. Then dopamine, so dopamine dysregulation is involved in the reward processing centers of our brain, and it can lead to increased sensation seeking and potential engagement in risky antisocial acts. And then there's the ANS, which is the autonomic nervous system. And there's this theory

which is fascinating called low arousal theory. And some research is now suggesting that individuals with antisocial tendencies exhibit a lower resting heart rate and reduced ANS activity, leading to a decreased sensitivity to potential negative consequences of their actions.

One of the really amazing and frightening sets of studies that this research emerged from was focusing on intimate partner violence and male abusers of the partners, and what they noted was that these guys would get so violent, violent, violent against their partners, and yet their heart rates would barely go up. Yeah, and there's also the cinematic version

of this would be in Silence and the Lambs. When you see doctor Hannibal Lecter, he's you know, sequestered, I think a piece of a pen, a writing pen, and he's been able to get out of his cuffs and get it out of his restraints, and when his meal is delivered, he takes down to security guards. But that what they do is they do it in slow motion to classical music. And I thought that was like, really a great artistic expression because it's actually showing as far

as Hannibal Electu's concerned, he's going in slow motion. You know, his system is just down, regulating down, regulating, down, regulating. So fascinating stuff.

caused by just those biological factors. Those are important, Those are things that we're learning more and more about every single day, but as well reference again towards the end. Remember there's a multi legged stool here, so we need to keep that in mind always.

towards those that he felt wronged him. Martin John Bryant was born on May seventh, nineteen sixty seven, in Tasmania, Australia, to Maurice and Carleen Bryant. He was the eldest of two children, and later review and interviews with family, friends and neighbors indicated that he displayed odd and troubling behaviors, including violence from an early age. He was also noted to engage in animal cruelty and bullying of his peers.

His family life was characterized by emotional detachment and social difficulties. His father, Maurice, was known as a hard working and quiet man, while his mother, Carlen, was often described in news of the day as strict and emotionally distanced. So let's be careful. We're not going to go in the

direction of schizophrenagenic mom shaming. That's not a thing again, even if it's been since nineteen ninety six, beginning in nineteen sixty seven with his birth, the passage of time and the perspective of what we do to win, and I feel like we have to just look through this through a very careful lens. But I just wanted to share with you so people didn't think that we were

leaving things out intentionally. Bryant's mother stated in a twenty eleven interview that when he was very young, she described him as annoying and a different child, and often surrounded by toys that he had intentionally broken. This is interesting to me because on one hand, the media is saying that she was cold and distant, and then this can also feel like we need to talk about Kevin. Yeah, which is Kilda Swinton in that wonderful role in the movie,

which I know. The book portrays the mother's character as having some of her own antisocial tendencies as oh, oh, okay, got it, but in the movie it's portrayed as she just keeps trying to get the doctors to talk to her about her son, trying to get her husband to acknowledge that these behaviors are there, and it's all falling on deaf ears.

have mental health and behavioral challenges. Teachers that were later interviewed offered that Bryant often displayed in appropriate emotional responses, sometimes laughing at situations that were serious or even distressing, while also exhibiting sudden outbursts that included violence and that then made him an outcast among his peers. He was reported to have pulled a snorkel from another child's face while they were diving and cutting down trees on a

neighbor's property. So we're already seeing a couple of those prongs that we looked at with conduct disorder and then antisocial personality disorder. Bryan's behavior became increasingly problematic as he grew older, with multiple referrals to professionals for psychiatric treatment and it age seventeen, a psychologist described him as quote mentally retarded with signs of a severe personality disorder end quote.

coming from disability pension provided by the Australian government. And then, in this very very strange turn of events, Bryant became friends with an eccentric, wealthy heiress named Helen Harvey, and after becoming her gardener, the local authorities discovered that both Harvey and her elderly mother were actually in need of medical care, so Bryant and his father cleaned up the dilapidated mansion for the patron to return from the hospital,

and in nineteen eighty seven, Bryant was invited allegedly to move into her lavish home, where she gave him a very extravagant lifestyle, purchasing him expensive clothing and cars and all sorts of things, and also allowing him to live without any responsibilities. And his father later noted to authorities that he was always worried about Bryant's emotional and physical rages, so the avoidance of which required his family basically just

to walk around on eggshells. They all avoided confrontation with him from an early age because he would go into these rages, and his father went on to say that on numerous occasions throughout his childhood, Bryant would threaten to go out and shoot people up. So in nineteen ninety two, Harvey, his benefactor, died in a car accident, leaving Bryant as the sole beneficiary of her will, providing him a mansion

and assets worth over a million dollars. However, Bryant's mother, concerned about his inability to manage finances, was successful in petitioning the courts to place his assets under a guardianship, giving legal trustees controls over his finances.

property he had wanted. He then made his way to Apport Arthur Historic site and opened fire indiscriminately on tourists and staff. The attack continued as he fled the scene, continuing to shoot people along the way, before finally barricading himself at Seascape Guesthouse, the scene of his initial murder. He then held police at bay for eighteen hours with

the hostage that he later killed. He was sentenced to thirty five life sentences without the possibility of parole, and the horrific crime ended up being a turning point in Australia gun laws. In response to the tragedy, the Howard government swiftly implemented sweeping gun control measures, including a ban on semi automatic rifles and high capacity shotguns. As well as a mandatory gun buyback program that led to the destruction of over six hundred and forty thousand firearms, and

stricter firearm licensing and registration laws. These changes remained some of the strictest gun laws in the world, with of course ongoing debates about their effectiveness. However, Australia has not experienced another mass shooting on the scale of Port Arthur since these laws were enacted. So, if one keeps chugging down this track that we're on from conduct disorder to

antisocial personality disorder, we eventually get to psychopathy. And not literally, I don't mean that one always leads to the other or to the worst disorder, but if it does, this is sort of the end of the road.

lack of empathy, and high risk taking tendencies. So while psychopathy is relatively rare in the general population at less than one percent, studies suggests that up to twenty percent of prison populations meet the criteria and they are responsible

for around fifty percent of serious crimes. So, again adding into the science behind all this, recent research, advances in brain imaging and genetics have resulted in studies that confirm that psychopathic traits can be inherited, appearing as early as childhood and persisting into adulthood with environmental factors such as abuse, and like I said earlier, high level acees playing apart acees being adverse childhood experiences.

linked to dopamine, serotonin, and stress response systems. One of the most studied is MAOA, a gene involved in regulating neurotransmitters, so individuals with a low activity version of this gene combined with the stressful or abusive upbringing have been found to be at a higher risk for aggression and criminal behavior. And then you throw some different brain structure on top of that and you have a diagnosis, and then you

have a recipe for psychopathy. So although we cannot diagnose, there is a very well established assessment tool, the Hair Psychopathy Checklist revised, that can categorize an individual as psychopathic if they receive a score of thirty or above on the traits listed on that tool. Okay, so getting into a case study for psychopathy. This case is also from Australia. Gary David was diagnosed with a personality disorder and additionally

labeled quote with psychopathic traits at age thirteen. David's childhood was filled with criminal activities and violent behaviors. His persistent antisocial conduct led to multiple incarcerations and highlighted the severe implications of untreated conduct disorder. Gary David was actually Gary Webb in nineteen fifty four and had an incredibly rough

start to his life. His father, Rupert David, was a career criminal and known pedophile who spent much of his life in and out of prisons, as well as psychiatric institutions. His mother, Betty David, struggled with alcoholism, leaving young Gary and his siblings to care for themselves, which resulted in Gary, at the age of four, along with his siblings, being removed from their home and placed into an orphanage, really marking the beginning of a childhood that was spent in

the system. He to this developmental period was instability and the abuse he experienced while being shuffled between orphanages, boys' homes, and detention centers. By age eleven years old, he was already committing minor crimes, including larceny and fraud. However, his behavior quickly escalated into more serious offenses, including making threats

and acts of violence. At thirteen years old, he was diagnosed with a personality disorder with psychopathic traits, a label that would follow him for the rest of his life.

self mutilation and swallowing corrosive liquids. The attending psychiatric staff saw these acts where were a mix of self destructive and manipulation due to their occurrences often coinciding when he felt ignored or when he felt mistreated. In nineteen eighty two, he attempted to rob a pizza restaurant and Rye, Victoria, but the attempt quickly escalated into a violent shootout, with both the shop owner and a responding officer both being

severely wounded. David himself was shot in the legs while trying to escape. This robbery seemed less about money and more about creating chaos, as some believe that David's goldmins event was to orchestrate a police shootout. Following his arrest, he was sentenced to fourteen years in prison for attempted murder, with the continuing of many of his previous expressions of self harm or violent outburst orchestrated again in the prison

system against both staff peers and himself. These behaviors made him a major security risk, and prison officials often struggled with how to manage him.

not actual plans. By nineteen ninety, govern ment health officials officially declared David mentally ill, which then led to a legal battle over his psychiatric status. Under the Mental Health Act of nineteen eighty six, and again this is in Australia, David had the right to appeal his diagnoses, which he did multiple times, and in May of nineteen ninety a review board ruled that he was not mentally ill, arguing that quote a personality disorder was not classified as a

mental illness under the law. So this decision, as you can imagine, spark controversy as many believe David was a clear danger to society.

So on June eleventh, nineteen ninety three, at the age of thirty eight, Gary David died by suicide in prison. He ingested razor blades, which caused severe internal injuries, leading to peritonitis. By the time of his death, he had spent thirty three years of his life in various institutions, prisons and psychiatric facilities. David's case left a lasting impact

on Australia's mental health and criminal justice systems. His life raised very difficult questions about how to handle individuals with extreme personality disorders who do not fit the traditional definitions of mental illness but still pose a danger to society. His violent fantasies and erratic behavior spark debates about risk management, involuntary hospitalization, and criminal responsibility.

and then the daddy of them all, psychopathy. But we want to also touch on a little branch off here and back in episode one sixty four, way back in twenty twenty three. I couldn't believe it when I looked at when this episode was that it was a leg But we focus solely on the subject of childhood psychopathy. We are not going to give you another episode to review, but I'm sure a lot of you remember it and

it's there if you guys want to go back. But we wanted to sort of recap some of the main points because it dovetails nicely into here when we talk about how some of these are exhibited and formed in childhood. So we have to remember that general misconceptions and cultural influences in society have long misunderstood childhood behavior, labeling children

as both innocent and evil. And then there has always been these unrealistic societal expectations that make extreme behaviors and children more shocking or a topic to kind of latch onto, like think about the super predator fallacy. So we just

we want to kind of lay that foundation first. Again, diagnosing personality disorders before age eighteen is not standard, but early behaviors can really indicate future concerns, and many behaviors linked to psychopathy are likely to stem from that third leg of trauma neglect or the adverse environments.

to predict. So if we look at this as the three factor model of psychopathy development, we have first genetic predisposition, nature, environmental influences, nurture. But then that last piece that ties in with our previous episodes of attachment theory parental bonding and attachment issues. But please keep in mind, folks, eighty percent of children with early psychopathic traits do not grow

into adult psychopaths. That's the silver lining of good knowing that early interventions that we have discussed way back in previous episodes can have long lasting and significant impact on proving that child's possibilities of success.

person in your life. So I kind of love that with the worst of the worst that you think of childhood psychopathy, eighty percent, I mean, that's a stark statistic there that even if they have early psychopathic traits, they're not going to grow into adult psychopaths.

So please don't fall into this rigid sort of binary view of that a healthy family dynamic has to look like a nineteen fifties version of the nuclear American family, because that's not what we're talking about. Even if a child lives in the system that is given great containment and has great access to mentors and positive role models, that can have an absolutely beneficial effect. So let's just keep challenging ourselves as we consider this very complex set of behaviors and diagnoses.