Factitious Disorder

Factitious Disorder

Factitious disorders are conditions in which a person acts as if they have an illness by deliberately producing, feigning, or exaggerating symptoms. Factitious disorder by proxy is a condition in which a person deliberately produces, feigns, or exaggerates symptoms in a person in their care. Münchausen syndrome, a severe form of factitious disorder, was the first kind identified, and was for a period the umbrella term for all such disorders. People with this condition may produce symptoms by contaminating urine samples, taking hallucinogens, injecting themselves with bacteria to produce infections, and other such similar behaviour. They might be motivated to perpetrate factitious disorders either as a patient or by proxy as a caregiver to gain any variety of benefits including attention, nurturance, sympathy, and leniency that are unobtainable any other way. In contrast, somatoform disorders are characterised by multiple somatic complaints, albeit both are diagnoses of exclusion.