Comorbidity
Kleptomania seems to be linked with other psychiatric disorders, especially mood swings, anxiety, eating disorders, and alcohol and substance abuse. The occurrence of stealing as a behavior in conjunction with eating disorders, particularly bulimia nervosa, is frequently taken as a sign of the harshness of the eating disorder.
A likely connection between depression and kleptomania was reported as early as 1911. It has since been extensively established in clinical observations and available case reports. The mood disorder could come first or co-occur with the beginning of kleptomania. In advanced cases, depression may result in self-inflicted injury and could even lead to suicide. Some people have reported relief from depression or manic symptoms after theft.
It has been suggested that because kleptomania is linked to strong compulsive and impulsive qualities, it can be viewed as a variation of obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders, together with pathological gambling, compulsive buying, pyromania, nailbiting and trichotillomania. This point achieves support from the unusually higher cases of OCD in close relatives of patients with kleptomania.
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