Fifty years ago, a disruptive child was exactly that: disruptive, unruly, a candidate for the naughty corner. A grimly anti-social teenager was just that too: grim and anti-social, best left to his or her own devices.
Today, we are alert to the possibility that such behaviours may reflect mental health problems of one sort or another, some dysfunction that needs a medical intervention. The disruptive child could be diagnosed as ADHD, the withdrawn teenager as depressed.
Both could receive some sort of treatment (or, more likely in these days of strapped resources, on the waiting list for it) – a treatment certainly expected to involve some sort of psychotherapy, and maybe (in both cases) drugs.
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