Firesetting

Abstract

The need for swift intervention to eliminate firesetting committed by children and adolescents is especially compelling given recent statistics indicating the prevalence and severity of this behavior (Kolko, 1985). Fire-setting episodes are responsible for property damages in the millions, thousands of physical injuries, and hundreds of deaths each year. Associated consequences include, but are not limited to, significant insurance, unemployment, and firefighting costs, family and community apprehension and despair, and social repudiation. Often exacerbating the outlook for treatment is the difficulty in both detecting and assessing acts of firesetting, since they may be concealed from others. Although wide differences exist in the demographic characteristics, family backgrounds, and individual incidents of firesetters (Kolko, in press), recent controlled studies have found that firesetters exhibit more aggression, delinquency, and externalizing behaviors, and reside in environments characterized by more diffuse parental symptomatology and family discord than do nonfiresetters.