Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) Residential Treatment
Connections Residential Program
The Connections program treats children up to age 12 who suffer from reactive attachment disorder while also emphasizing family education and training workshops.
Symptoms of Reactive Attachment Disorder:
- Superficially engaging and charming
- Indiscriminately affectionate with strangers
- Destructive toward self, others and objects
- Developmentally delayed
- Poor eye contact
- Not cuddly with parents/caregivers
- Cruel to animals and siblings
- Lacks cause-and-effect thinking
- Poor peer relationships
- Inappropriately demanding or clingy
- Engages in stealing and lying
- Lacks a conscience
- Nonsense questions/chatter
- Poor impulse control
- Abnormal speech patterns
- Fights for control over everything
- Hoarding or gorging of food
- Preoccupation with fire, blood and gore
Causes of Reactive Attachment Disorder:
- In-utero physical trauma
- Maternal ambivalence toward pregnancy
- Sudden separation from primary caretaker
- Abuse
- Frequent moves or placements
- Neglect
- Genetic disposition
- Birth trauma
- Undiagnosed and/or painful illness
- Inconsistent or inadequate day care
- Unprepared mothers with poor parenting skills
Admissions criteria for the Connections Program:
- Children up to age 12 (adolescents are treated on our general psychiatric RTC unit)
- Manifests at least eight symptoms 80 percent of the time
- Evaluation by a physician or therapist prior to being accepted into the program
- Experienced contributing trauma prior to age two
Initial interview* includes exploration of:
- Sibling relationship
- Family functioning
- Educational functioning
- Peer relationships
- Community functioning
- Personal functioning
- Medical status
* Initial interviews may be conducted by telephone for geographically distant families.