Getting inside the minds of young firesetters.

Getting inside the minds of young firesetters. From Daily Bullietin California.
Should we be doing more in Scotland to understand our youth who feel it is ok to set fires?

Interesting Research in the USA.

The quiet 6-year-old girl who shared a cramped bedroom with four other peple did not match the definition of a firesetter.But when she was brought to an occupational therapist at Loma Linda University, her drawings showed there was something much deeper going on inside her head.The girl shared through art that she was frustrated with her living conditions - an overcrowded home filled with siblings, cousins and parents - and a bedroom so crowded that four beds lined the walls and barricaded the door, blocking them in at night.

The girl told her therapist, "If I could burn the house, if I could burn the room, my parents would have to get a new house.""The thinking builds up and triggers," said Praveen Injeti, an occupational therapist at Loma Linda University Medical Center. "She didn't do anything about it but she was looking for something to control."Injeti was using the young girl as an example during a two-day conference held at the Double Tree Hotel in Ontario that focused on juvenile arson.

Therapists, along with doctors, nurses, firefighters, police officers and prosecutors, met inside a conference room Wednesday and Thursday to discuss the problem of teens - or younger - setting fires.Topics included the role of fire service and mental health professionals, interpretation of children's drawings, child-related fires in school, interviewing tips and the discussion of a pathological firesetter versus a curious one.

"This year, the conference focused on the mental health of juvenile firesetters," said James Floros, executive director and CEO of the San Diego-based Burn Institute, one of the sponsors of the conference.Firesetting is usually a symptom of a larger program."The majority of kids are good, normal kids who don't know the danger (of firesetting). But other kids have psychological problems that they don't know how to deal with. And it really is a mental health problem."Anger and rage.

A number of Injeti's clients associate fire with anger and rage.He showed a self-portrait of a girl who had colored the top of her hair red and the rest of it blue. The girl told Injeti that the red portion of her hair represented rage and when she gets angry, she heats up.Another patient, who was a firesetter, defined fire as protection."He said, `with fire, you can take away the hurt completely and it doesn't come back again,"' Injeti told the room.

According to the U.S. Fire Administration, juvenile arson and youth-set fires result in more than 300 deaths and 2,000 injuries as well as $300 million in property damage and more than 400,000 incidents annually.Younger children tend to play with fire at home and in a bedroom, where a lot of things can catch fire, said Mimi Kang, who has master's degrees in child development and clinical mental health counseling. Older children often play with fire outside, in vacant areas."Children are under the impression they can control the fires they set," she said during the conference. "And parents underestimate children's knowledge of using matches and lighters.

"It's really important to know why (children) play with fire. It can help parents prevent future fires."Pathological vs. curiousProfessionals must first determine if the juvenile fire setter is a pathological or curious one.Sixty percent of juveniles are non-pathological fire setters, said Kenneth Fineman, a board certified psychologist.Fineman said he tries to determine whether the juvenile will set more fires and if that person will be responsive to treatment.If the suspect is deemed experimental or curious - determined by a lack of understanding of the destructive potential of fire, access to lighters, matches, or open flame unsupervised - then Fineman advises to "give him some fire education and send him home," he said.It's the other 40 percent Fineman worries about.

Experts say pathologically motivated firesetting describes a severely disturbed juvenile, including those who are actively psychotic, acutely paranoid or delusional, or youth who have lived in chronically disturbed and bizarre environments."If a person is getting a rush from firesetting, we gotta know about it... and we gotta worry about it," he said.But do not be quick to categorize, Fineman said, because the myths like race, age or intelligence are not necessarily true when it comes to firesetting."The not smart ones get caught, he said. "The ones who are bright get away with a lot of firesetting.Yucaipa firesetterOn the surface 16-year-old Ricky Sean Lukacs, who admitted to setting a number fires in 2009 in the the Yucaipa that scorched more than 2,400 acres combined, didn't fit the stereotype either.

The Yucaipa resident had a 4.2 GPA in high school and was taking additional classes at Crafton Hills College twice a week. He had no criminal history and was liked by his teachers, said San Bernardino County Sheriff's Detective Holly Liepert, who worked the case.But looking deeper, there were signs of distress. He didn't have a lot of friends, his father was out of the picture, and his mother worked three jobs to make ends meet, Liepert said.In addition to being intelligent, the boy seemed to be interested in fire and had a fascination with weather."We believe his intellectual level helped him use weather to make fires so grand and cause so much damage," Liepert said.Ricky Sean Lukacs admitted to starting the fires, she said, and his list came to 13 blazes that dated back to 2007."He just used the lighter and put it directly onto the brush to burn, which just took off," Liepert said.

It was later determined that the fires he set caused just under $10 million worth of damage."These fires just devastated the area," Liepert said.Cases like these are what encourages Floros to continue with the annual Juvenile Firesetter Conference."It is widely accepted that juvenile firesetting is the fastest growing fire threat in the U.S.," he said. "Firesetting is a problem anywhere, but firesetting in Southern California, with the dry brush conditions and Santa Ana winds, is a recipe for disaster."