ABSTRACT
The psychiatric diagnosis of conduct disorder (CD) reflects a medicalized understanding of aggressive behaviors in youth. This chapter explores the medico-legal borderland in which both mental health and juvenile justice systems address aggressive behaviors among adolescents using the diagnostic construct of CD. The social experiences of screening, diagnosing and treating youth with CD are jointly shared by the mental health and justice systems. Medicalization consists of defining a problem in medical terms, using medical language to describe a problem, adopting a medical framework to understand a problem or using a medical intervention to "treat" it. Mental health experts consider CD to be among the most common childhood/adolescent psychiatric disorders in both community- and clinic-based populations. CD may be seen as a gateway diagnosis to adult psychopathy with life-long stigma. Stigma-reduction campaigns, rarely address issues relevant to the medico-legal borderland and youth diagnosed with CD, especially those who are in juvenile justice settings.
