Contents:
- Medical Video: Curing Kleptomania
- What is kleptomania?
- Can kleptomania be cured?
- How to cure kleptomania
- What must be noted when healing kleptomania
Medical Video: Curing Kleptomania
You really don't need the item and you have the money to buy it. However, there was a tremendous urge to steal the item. This is a simple explanation of a rare psychological condition, namely kleptomania. Often, people who suffer from kleptomania are ostracized and labeled bad because of their habit of stealing. Because, many people assume that it is impossible to cure kleptomania.
Eits, wait a minute. Before assuming that kleptomania cannot be cured, have you really understood what kleptomania is? Can this condition be corrected? Check out the answer below.
What is kleptomania?
Kleptomania is a disorder / difficulty controlling the desire or urge to steal. This disorder appears not only once, but continuously. Unlike people who like shoplifting, people with kleptomania have no mature goals or plans. The desire to steal arises and is very difficult to lose.
Not yet known exactly what causes kleptomania. However, according to experts this condition is very large in relation to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Because, people with kleptomania experience abnormalities in the nerves and brain circuits that regulate the system reward (reward). It is located in the front and center of the human brain. The pattern of thinking of people with kleptomania is also similar to people who are addicted.
Can kleptomania be cured?
Because the exact cause of kleptomania has not been found, so far there has not been a specific treatment that can cure kleptomania completely. The treatment offered is more focused on controlling the urge to steal and suppress satisfaction after stealing something. However, it is not impossible if the impulse will one day appear again.
How to cure kleptomania
To help cure kleptomania, you cannot rely on just one treatment method. Psychiatrists or psychologists usually recommend a combination of counseling and drug administration.
In counseling, you and your therapist will usually go through a meeting session several times to explore the triggers of your behavior. After that, the therapist will use a specific approach to change your mindset. Usually the approach used is cognitive and behavioral therapy (CBT). From here, you will be taught the right technique to control the desire to steal. The family or people closest to you may also be invited to join therapy to assist and support changes in your behavior.
To be more effective, counseling can be accompanied by medication. According to a psychiatrist Dr. Jon Grant, medicines prescribed by doctors can control the production of endorphins in the brain. Endorphins themselves have a role to give special satisfaction after stealing. By reducing endorphins, stealing does not feel satisfying for people who take this drug. Therefore, people with kleptomania don't want to steal or even stop stealing at all.
What must be noted when healing kleptomania
A clinical and forensic psychologist and kleptomania researcher Elizabeth Corsale warned that there was no shortcut to cure kleptomania. You need a long and determined process so you can control the urge to steal.
Furthermore, Elizabeth explained that someone was said to have successfully undergone treatment for kleptomania if he fulfilled several criteria. The first is to suppress the desire to steal in the long run, in the sense that the condition will not recur. The second is being able to live a good life in terms of career aspects, personal relationships, and mental health. The last is to succeed in forgiving and move on from his past behavior. That is, he did not later experience psychological trauma because he had suffered from kleptomania.
