Students:
Miguel Solis
Jhonder Rebolledo
Gabriel Tiniaco
Brian ramirez
Pyromania is defined as a pattern of deliberate setting of fires for
pleasure or satisfaction derived from the relief of tension experienced
before the fire-setting. The name of the disorder comes from two
Greek words that mean "fire" and "loss of reason" or "madness."
 Causes
 Most studies of causation regarding pyromania have
focused on children and adolescents who set fires.
Early studies in the field used the categories of
Freudian psychoanalysis to explain this behavior.
Freud had hypothesized that fire setting represented
a regression to a primitive desire to demonstrate
power over nature.
 ENVIRONMENTAL. Environmental factors in
adolescent firesetting include:
 Poor supervision on the part of parents and other
significant adults.
 Early learning experiences of watching adults use
fire carelessly or inappropriately.
 Parental neglect or emotional univolvement.
 Parental psychopathology. Firesetters are
significantly more likely to have been physically or
sexually abused than children of similar economic or
geographic backgrounds. They are also more likely to
have witnessed their parents abusing drugs or acting
violently.
 Symptoms
 Firesetting among children and adolescents
and pyromania in adults may be either chronic
or episodic; some persons may set fires
frequently as a way of relieving tension, others
apparently do so only during periods of
unusual stress in their lives.
 In addition to the outward behavior of
firesetting, pyromania in adults has been
associated with symptoms that include
depressed mood, thoughts of suicide, repeated
conflicts in interpersonal relationships, and
poor ability to cope with stress.
 Children and adolescents
 Treatment of children and adolescents
involved with repeated firesetting appears
to be more effective when it follows a casemanagement approach rather than a
medical model, because many young
firesetters come from chaotic households.
Treatment should begin with a structured
interview with the parents as well as the
child, in order to evaluate stresses on the
family, patterns of supervision and
discipline, and similar factors.
 Adults
 Pyromania in adults is considered
difficult to treat because of the lack of
insight and cooperation on the part of
most patients diagnosed with the
disorder. Treatment usually consists
of a combination of medication—
usually one of the
selective serotonin reuptake
inhibitors— and long-term insightoriented psychotherapy
 to preventive measures directed specifically at firesetting,
recent research into self-control as a general character trait
offers hope that it can be taught and practiced like many
other human skills. If programs could be developed to
improve people's capacity for self-control, they could
potentially prevent a wide range of psychiatric disorders.