Prevalence of reactive attachment disorder in a deprived population.

Background: Reactive attachment disorder (RAD) is associated with early childhood maltreatment and has unknown population prevalence beyond infancy.

Aims: To estimate RAD prevalence in a deprived population of children.

Method: All 1646 children aged 6-8 years old in a deprived sector of an urban UK centre were screened for RAD symptoms. Parents of high and low scorers were interviewed using semi-structured interviews probing for psychopathology and individuals likely to have RAD were offered face-to-face assessment.

Results: Questionnaire data were available from 92.8% of teachers and 65.8% of parents. Assessments were conducted with 50% of those invited and missing data were imputed--based on the baseline data--for the rest. We calculated that there would be 23 children with definite RAD diagnoses, suggesting that the prevalence of RAD in this population was 1.40% (95% CI 0.94-2.10).

Conclusions: In this deprived general population, RAD was not rare.