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Abstract
Firesetting behavior results in serious damage to lives and property every year. Firesetting has been linked to a number of comorbid psychiatric disorders including depression, substance abuse, conduct disorder, antisocial personality disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, psychotic disorder, schizoid personality disorder, and schizophrenia. Psychiatric disorders differ by gender. In addition, juvenile fire setters have history of a separate set of psychiatric comorbidities. The strong correlation between psychiatric comorbidities and fire setting behavior illustrates the need for fire service and mental health collaboration.
Keywords: Firesetting, pyromania, arson, impulse control disorder, comorbid psychiatric disorders, conduct disorder, antisocial personality disorder, schizophrenia, gender
Introduction
Firesetting is an often overlooked problem that is completed by youth as well as adults and results in serious damage to lives as well as property. Firesetting has been linked to a number of comorbid psychiatric disorders. Evaluating comorbid psychiatric disorders has important implications in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of firesetting behavior.Firesetting behavior has been a subject of interest for a number of years in scientific literature. The term pyromania was first used by Marc in 1833 (1). Kraepelin defined pyromania as an "impulsive insanity" (1,2). Sigmond Freud believed pyromania was the result of aberrant psychosexual development (1,2).
The result of firesetting may involve both the legal and mental health systems. The problem is more common than is often realized and results in extensive damage.There are more than 62,000 arsons per year in the United States (1). This number is particularly startling considering that only 3% of suspected arson fires led to conviction (3). The National Fire Protection Association estimated 316,610 intentional fires each year during the period from 2003-2006 (3). Intentional fires during the same time period were associated with 437 civilian fire deaths, and 1404 civilian fire injuries (3). It is estimated that the United States suffers a loss of $2 billion dollars annually due to intentional firesetting. It has been presumed that this behavior is so common, and the losses so great, because firesetting is relatively "easy" to complete (1). Firesetting does not require weapons or interpersonal interaction (1).
A distinction must be made between the terms firesetting behavior, intentional firesetting, pyromania, and arson. Firesetting is a behavior that includes setting fires both accidentally and intentionally (1). The term "intentional...