The Effect of the Presence of Oppositional Defiant Disorder in Children on the Quality of the Relationships among their Family Members

Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) is one of the most common behavioral disorders that severely damages a child’s interpersonal relationships with peers, friends, and family members. The family and the quality of its interrelationships, as the first and most enduring factor in the formation of the child’s personality and subsequent behaviors, is a determining factor in the development of mental health of the child in adulthood. The results of various studies in this field showed that ODD has many negative consequences for the family and children with such disorder that experience many problems in relationships with their parents and siblings. These children are exposed to problems such as family instability and parental adjustment problems, parental abuse, as well as lack of a warm and friendly atmosphere in sibling relationships. Therefore, there is a need for research on the quality of reciprocal relationships between family members and children with ODD and examine the different approaches to such relationships. For this purpose, the present study, reviews the characteristics of children with ODD, the quality of child-parent relationships, as well as the quality of sibling relationships in these families and proposes useful treatment strategies to improve these relationships.