Reactive Attachment Disorder Case Study

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“Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) is characterized by serious problems in emotional attachments to others, and it is a condition found in children who may have received grossly negligent care and do not form a healthy emotional attachment with their primary caregivers (2011).” One of the cases presented in the paper is especially relevant to my hypothesis. Jimmy never had a stable home when he was young due to parents’ divorce, and was provided neglected and abusive care by his mother and stepfather until child protected services stepped in. Jimmy was then sent to live with his father and stepmother. Jimmy’s father noticed that Jimmy exhibited abnormal behaviors when he first arrived. Jimmy was easily provoked and had difficulty establish …show more content…
This caused poor development in many areas, especially in Jimmy’s cognitive functioning. This case study is the perfect example demonstrating the effect of lack of emotional nurturing on children’s learning capability. The last paper written by Raaska, Elovainio, Sinkkonen, Matomäki, Mäkipää and Lapinleimu named “Internationally adopted children in Finland: parental evaluations of symptoms of reactive attachment disorder and learning difficulties – FINADO study (2012).” Authors set up the experiment to learn the correlation between Reactive Attachment Disorder and learning capabilities of internationally adopted Finnish children. In the introduction, authors briefly introduce the definition of Reactive Attachment Disorder and previous studies about it. In addition, authors disclaim that other factors might also affect the association between RAD and learning difficulties such as children’s physical disability and age (van Ijzendoorn et al., 2005). This research is part of the Finnish Adoption study, so participants (634 boys and 803 girls) are selected from internationally adopted children in Finland since 1985 (Raaska et all,