Mental Illness: Frotteurism in Children

If you know a child diagnosed with the mental health disorder called frotteurism, you know it is a mental illness where the child is consumed with touching or rubbing their genitalia against another person's clothes or body without their permission. This mental illness is known as a paraphilia which refers to abnormal sexual arousal with objects, situations, or individuals that can result in distress or serious problems for the child, their family, and friends.

Mental Illness-Characteristics

A child with frotteurism spends time planning how they will escape as soon as they touch or rub someone. Given the need to escape quickly causes most attacks to occur in crowded places like malls, busy halls at school, during body contact sport activities, on school buses etc. A child with this mental illness focuses on getting close enough to touch the victim's thighs or buttocks. They also like to run their hands over, or rub, a victim's genitals or breasts.

Children with this mental disorder often fantasize about having a special and loving relationship with the victims at the moment they have the sexual contact with them. It is at this moment that the fantasy vanishes and they know they need to runaway to escape potential consequences.

Mental Illness- Causes

The cause of frotteurism is not known or understood by researchers. There is a general sense of agreement among experts that the mental illness starts by having an unplanned and unintentional encounter with someone's genitalia that resulted in sexual pleasure. When this happens, a child thinks about it and makes the experience happen again. Repetitive experiences build into a mental illness and begin to affect a child's daily functioning.

Mental Illness-Demographics

When looking at who is most likely to have the diagnosis of frotteurism, there are more males than females with the diagnosis. Females are most often the victims. Males, between the ages of 15 to 24 most commonly are diagnosed with the mental illness. It seems there is a decline in the acts of frotteurism after the age of 25.

Mental Illness- Prevalence

Conducting prevalence studies on frotteurism is difficult for several reasons: most adolescents do not want to be referred for chidl therapy and many don't think they have a problem. Since frotteurism is against the law and can result in criminal charges, many families are resistant to seek help for their child. There are therapists who are also resistant to make the diagnosis due to the criminality of the mental illness.

Mental Illness-Treatment

It is quite difficult for person's with frotteurism to respond to treatment unless they want to change their behavior. Admitting they need help and wanting to change is not commonly seen in persons with this mental illness. When treatment is accepted or ordered by the courts, the treatment method of choice is often behavior therapy. It is also common to prescribe a drug called medroxyprogesterone -a female hormone.

Mental Illness-Prognosis

In general, the prognosis for change or quitting the behavior is poor. There may a chance the behaviors will decrease because of fear of being caught and having to deal with the judicial system and in some cases the potential of embarrassment reduces the incidence of behaviors.

If you know a child diagnosed with the mental illness of frotteurism, it is important to know they have a reduced chance of change and the behavior could continue into adulthood. Behavior therapy is most commonly applied but is affective only when the patient wants to change. Drug therapy may be helpful.