Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders of Infancy and Early Childhood

The product of an 8-year effort by ZERO TO THREE’s multidisciplinary Diagnostic Classification Task Force, DC: 0–3 gives clinicians and researchers a comprehensive, multi-axial framework for diagnosing emotional and developmental problems in the first three years of life.

DC: 0–3 is based on a new understanding of emotional, social, intellectual, motor, and sensory patterns in infancy and makes it possible to pinpoint very young children’s adaptive capacities as well as their emotional and developmental difficulties.

DC: 0–3 fills a critical gap in professionals’ ability to diagnose, prevent, and treat difficulties in the earliest years by identifying and describing disorders not addressed in other classification systems and pointing the way to effective intervention approaches. The book focuses on:

*The infant’s relationships with parents and other important caregivers;
*Individual differences in motor, sensory, language, cognitive, and socio/emotional development;
*The young child’s coping skills and capacity to organize experience;
*Family patterns and relationships; and
*Psychosocial stressors in the environment.

The diagnostic categories described in DC: 0–3 include traumatic stress disorder, disorders of affect, adjustment disorders, regulatory disorders, sleep and eating disorders, behavior disorders, disorders of relating and communicating, and relationship disorders. Seventeen case vignettes illustrate DC: 0–3’s application to evaluation and treatment planning with infants, toddlers, and their families in a wide range of settings.

This is the first systematic, developmentally based guide to classifying very young children’s mental health and developmental difficulties. Its diagnostic categories reflect the consensus of a multidisciplinary group of experts in the fields of infant development and mental health. The revised edition draws on ten additional years of empirical research and clinical practice worldwide.