Psychiatrists have recognized pathological lying as a mental affliction since the late 1800s.
Mental health and mental disorders specialists however say the condition-pathological lying, has never been given serious attention, no study has been conducted or funding set towards the same.
There is no evidence-based way to treat it as it doesn’t have its own diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Pathological lying has always been termed or recognized as a feature or symptom of other mental disorders instead of a disorder by itself.
Drew Curtis, an associate professor of psychology at Angelo State University in Texas who studies pathological lying, said the most effective way of treating it is yet to be discovered.
The standard approach to treating lying relies on techniques borrowed from cognitive behavioral therapy, which emphasizes understanding and changing thinking patterns.
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Curtis and Hart recently published a study laying out evidence to support the inclusion of pathological lying as a standalone diagnosis in the DSM.
One Timothy Levine, chair of the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, set out to write a book about deception in 2016, he wanted to include a chapter on one of its most extreme forms: pathological lying.
“I just couldn’t find any good research base on this,” said Levine,
The first thing to know about pathological or compulsive lying is that it is rare, Levine says. His studies show that most people tell the truth most of the time.
“These really prolific liars are pretty unusual,” said Levine, whose book about deception, “Duped,” was published in 2019.
“It’s more the clinical category of people who tell excessive amounts of lies that impairs their functioning, causes distress, and poses some risk to themselves or others,” Curtis said, sharing the working definition of pathological lying that he and Hart hope will eventually be included in the DSM.
“What we found, examining all the cases, is that the lying appears to be somewhat compulsive,” Hart said.
“That is, they’re lying in situations when a reasonable person probably wouldn’t lie, and it seems like even to their own detriment in many cases. It tends to cause dysfunction in their lives,” Hart said.