What is some background on attachment issues and what is referred to as Reactive Attachment Disorder?
The mental health field uses diagnostic definitions from the DSM-IV Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. The diagnosis of Reactive Attachment Disorder is one of the most disputed and debated in the entire volume. The basic elements are: (A) having major disruption in the quality or consistency of basic care between the ages of 0-5 years, and as a result, have (i) a persistent failure to initiate or respond in a developmentally appropriate fashion to most social interactions, as manifested by excessively inhibited, hypervigilant, or highly ambivalent and contradictory responses (e.g.: the child may respond to caregivers with a mixture of approach, avoidance, and resistance to comforting, or may exhibit frozen watchfulness) OR (ii) diffuse attachments as manifested by indiscriminate sociability with marked inability to exhibit appropriate selective attachments (e.g.: excessive familiarity with relative strangers or lack of selectivity in choice of attachment figures). (B) The
