This chapter reviews and evaluates advances in the treatment of conduct disorder. From a treatment perspective, conduct disorder represents an array of child, parent, family and contextual conditions. Parent management training is one of the most well researched therapy techniques and has been evaluated in scores of randomized controlled outcome trials with children and adolescents varying in age (e.g. 2-17 years old) and severity of oppositional and conduct problems. Functional family therapy (FFT) reflects an integrative approach to treatment that has relied on systems, behavioural and cognitive views of dysfunction. Multisystemic therapy (MST) is a family-systems based approach to treatment. The children referred for treatment often experience dysfunction and impairment in multiple domains, including comorbid disorders, learning and academic difficulties, dysfunctional peer relations and deficits in prosocial activities. Family morbidity is no less significant for developing and evaluating treatment for conduct disorder.

Problems involving disruptive behaviour constitute one of the most frequent causes of clinical referral. One of the striking features of all studies of psychosocial stress and adversity is the wide diversity in people's responses. Kazdin provides a comparable service with respect to therapeutic interventions. He notes the lack of evidence for traditional counselling or relationship approaches but points to the modest efficacy of four, somewhat related, modes of intervention; parent management training (PMT), cognitive problem-solving skills training (PSST), functional family therapy (FFT) and multisystemic therapy (MST). Each focuses on interpersonal interactions and on means of coping with real life challenges and problems, but does so with somewhat different emphases and therapeutic techniques. In pointing to the demonstrated benefits of these forms of intervention, he also draws attention to some of the key challenges that remain.