KLEPTOMANIA a serious Psychosocial issue

Malik Iram Hayat

In the past when an individual behaved erratically and in an unusual way, people pointed straight towards the evil divine spirits that “He is in control of the evil spirits; jinn, take him to Pir or shah to fix him. I, myself believed in the existence of the divine spirits but can you just think a minute that the person behaving abnormal may have a mental illness? Yes, there is a mental condition in which people didn’t really steal but they are unable to resist that urges to steal (Kleptomania).

Let me i-ntroduce you with an ex-ample of a surprisingly s-trange case. Firstly what Kleptomania is? It is an enigmatic condition, a re-current inability to resist urges to steal items that a person don’t really need.

In 19th century a Swiss Physician Mathey wrote of “a unique madness characterized by tendency to steal without motive”. It is more common in women than in man. The prevalence of kleptomania in US general population has been estimated at 6 per 1000 people. Kleptomanic often report lack of self-esteem, a difficult childhood and marital conflict. Kleptomanics have high rate of substance abuse and mood disorder. Let take an example of the first case: A 45 year old, divorced Chinese male was remanded three times in the same year for same charge and evaluated specifically with regard to kleptomania.

He had attained GCE”A” level qualification. He had previously been diagnosed with conduct disorder, depression and antisocial personality disorder. He had starting shoplifting from the age 29.

He was caught and spent more than seven years in prison for shoplifting items like candles, crayons, ink bottles, earrings, batteries and kept these items in cupboard in his home.

After diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder and Kleptomania he was given psychotherapy for months and then was recovered after psychotherapies.

Is there any medicine for this unpredictable disorder? Sensibly speaking there is no define cure for these types of mental ailments. However, psychotherapies have been used to improve the living of such cases.

“The mind has exactly the same power as hands; not merely to grasp the world, but to change it”. (Colin Wilson). We have heard that we use just 10% of our brain so what about the rest of 90%?

What about if you had kleptomania, can you be able to live your life normally? Can we be able to express our mental abilities? After reading about the mental illnesses we get to know that how much powerful our brain is and of what capabilities we are!