is pedophilia a mental illness?

Answer 1

It is not as much a mental illness as it is actually a social illness. Psychology today has been ineffective in dealing with this phenomenon because it is thought of as a sexual aberration or a mental illness. The true fact is that this phenomenon is increasing at alarming rates because of the sexualization of children by the media in society. Most people today accept older male and younger female relationships as "Normal" and scoff at the idea of criminalizing this behavior. Opinions differ widely on what age difference is acceptable. It is not a mental illness, rather, it is a ingrained behavior by a society who has abandoned all moral decency in favor of self indulgence. TV, magazines, tabloids, internet - etc. all glorify youth and sexuality, just as in years past, hollywood glorified smoking and drinking, more recently, drugs and sexual promiscuity. When a person is constantly bombarded with these images on a daily basis, a breaking down of moral character will soon follow. If we are going to stop sexual crimes of all kinds, we must first stop the airways and other medias, including movies, from constantly glorifying these types of behavior. People need to quit going to these sexual movies and buying sexual magazines and then they need to elect moral leaders and finally boycott any companies that advertise on these sexual shows or ads.
If there was no money in sexualizing children, if there was no money to be made from pornography, these people and organizations who publish this stuff would cease to exist.
Mental illness, I think not....A cancer spreading through society is how I would explain it. Know this, in 20 years, pedophiles will have powerful lobbyists in Washington and they will be fighting for their "Right" to not be discriminated against and soon society will cave in and accept this as normal behavior. Just like society has accepted other immoral behavior that 20 years ago was thought of as immoral.

Answer 2

It is classified as a mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) (published by the American Psychiatric Association).

It is not classified as a personality disorder, it is a paraphilia (abnormal sexual behavior).

Sexual molestation of a child is a crime. Many people who are charged with this crime will be diagnosed with pedophilia but not all of them--some people have one incident of unacceptable behavior due to being drunk or on drugs.

Call that a bad answer if you want to, but everything I wrote is a fact, not just my opinion.

My wife works for a mental hospital and they have a program for sexual predators who are in prison; pedophiles and rapists. I don't think the program does any good because it seems to me that people who do things like that usually don't change. Now, that is my opinion. My wife hates it when she has to meet with one of the patients from that program because she doesn't like to be around people like that. That's her opinion.

Answer 3

It's classed with personality disorders like antisocial disorder (sociopath). Frequency that they were abused young is high. They aren't born that way. Pedofiles are usually made.