On the occasion of the frequent fires and extremely high temperatures in recent days, Dr. Petar Stoev, a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy, gave an interview to Iskra.bg.
What is the profile of people who deliberately cause fires?
„Society is ‘tempted’ to shift responsibility for fires /as well as many other misdemeanours/ onto mentally ill people. This social phenomenon is called „stigma“. But in reality, people with a pathological, morbid passion for arson / pyromaniacs / are a tiny fraction of the perpetrators. Throughout my practice, I have encountered 2 or 3 genuine cases, and that was while I was working in Germany. They experience pleasure, sometimes combined with sexual arousal /and a sense of relief/, causing deliberate fires, often with heavy material losses and human casualties. In fact, most fires in our country have been started for a very rational purpose – many forests have been burned to change the status of the land. The other trouble in Bulgaria is the large number of elementary people who do not think about the consequences. For example, the citizen who set fire to tyres in his yard and then burnt down 12 houses. A huge percentage of fires /according to forestry officials and firefighters/ are caused by farmers and breeders not following basic fire safety requirements. These cases have nothing to do with psychiatry. It is just that most Bulgarians believe that the state is absent and we can do whatever we want.“
Do high temperatures affect our behaviour? Do we become more anxious and more irritable?
„High temperatures affect people both somatically and mentally. The elderly dehydrate quickly in heat. They do not feel a sense of thirst and if they do not take in enough fluids, in high temperatures they can become dehydrated, collapse and in more severe cases develop delirium. In general, people become more irritable. At the same time, however, many phenomena that have nothing to do with the climate are justified by the heat both at home and abroad. For example, the growing income gap, declining purchasing power, the impoverishment of the population, the wrong decisions taken by governments. If it can serve as any consolation, natural phenomena have always been used by governments as an explanation for accumulating social problems.
As for our patients – the mentally ill – they become more sensitive during changing weather and their condition worsens. These are the transitional periods: winter-spring, autumn-winter. And now, as temperatures rise, they become more sensitive and irritable.“
[…] Psychiatrist Dr. Petar Stoev: It is not the mentally ill, but primitive people who cause fires […]