A Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Idi-Araba, and a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, University of Lagos, Dr Charles Umeh, speaks with LARA ADEJORO on how to deal with forgery in the country
Is there any psychological issue with forgery?
Forgery could be age falsification or certificate falsification and that is why the personality of the individual comes to play.
Some people are pathological liars, so they might not have any qualms about lying but those who have a conscience always feel bad when they lie. So occasionally, they lie and if it gets back to them, they feel it. People lie for different reasons, and we have different degrees of a lie, but to me, a lie is a lie because it boils down to your integrity, self-esteem, and your inability to own up to your actions.
There are times people will be in difficulties and they feel lying is the way out, maybe they don’t do it very often and that is when it becomes a psychological issue for them if they are eventually found out. If you are dealing with a pathological liar, lying is second nature, so you can’t even know what the truth or lie is in their everyday conversation.
What could affect such situations is people’s reactions. If there is ageneral condemnation, the person might be traumatised, especially when you look at the age factor. For instance, if everybody starts to condemn a younger person, they start to be weighed down, traumatised, and if care is not taken, some of them may not recover from it unless they seek psychological intervention. Also, when things happen, the way you handle them determines their impact on you.
Click here to read the full story
