Factitious Disorders
FACTITIOUS DISORDER
Facticious means artificial or unnatural, a definition that could not be more appropriate. People who suffer from factitious disorder (FD) “are great con men or con women, although what they obtain through their conning most people would far rather not have”[1]. The earliest accounts of factitious disorders are recorded in the times of Galen, a Roman physician in the second century A.D. The term ‘factitious’ itself, is derived from a book, published in 1843 by Gavin, On Feigned and Factitious Diseases. Most aggressive study of the disorder began in 1950s, when an article published by a British psychiatrist, Richard Asher who initiated use of the term, Munchausen’s Syndrome[i], to describe a subtype of factitious disorder. The term factitious disorders (FD) refers to “any illness deliberately produced or falcified for the sole purpose of assuming the sick role. Patients waste valuable time and resources with lenthy and unnecessary tests and procedures at a cost, according to one estimate, of $40 million per year”(Elwyn, 2002 [online]) . Patients with FD often generate feelings of frustration and anger in the physician, because they violate the unwritten rules of being a patient: they do not provide a reasonable honest history, they do hold the desire to recover and cooperate with treatment toward the end amd fially their symptoms do not result from an accident or injury.
There are four main types of factitious disorder, according to the DXM-IV-TR: • Factitious disorder with mostly physical symptoms: Individuals claim to have symptoms related to a physical illness, such as symptoms of chest pain or stomach problems. • Factitious disorders with mostly psychological symptoms: patients mimic behavior that is typical of mental illness, for example schizophrenia. May appear confused, make absurd statements and report hallucinations. • Factitious disorder with both physical and psychological symptoms: patients produce
Facticious means artificial or unnatural, a definition that could not be more appropriate. People who suffer from factitious disorder (FD) “are great con men or con women, although what they obtain through their conning most people would far rather not have”[1]. The earliest accounts of factitious disorders are recorded in the times of Galen, a Roman physician in the second century A.D. The term ‘factitious’ itself, is derived from a book, published in 1843 by Gavin, On Feigned and Factitious Diseases. Most aggressive study of the disorder began in 1950s, when an article published by a British psychiatrist, Richard Asher who initiated use of the term, Munchausen’s Syndrome[i], to describe a subtype of factitious disorder. The term factitious disorders (FD) refers to “any illness deliberately produced or falcified for the sole purpose of assuming the sick role. Patients waste valuable time and resources with lenthy and unnecessary tests and procedures at a cost, according to one estimate, of $40 million per year”(Elwyn, 2002 [online]) . Patients with FD often generate feelings of frustration and anger in the physician, because they violate the unwritten rules of being a patient: they do not provide a reasonable honest history, they do hold the desire to recover and cooperate with treatment toward the end amd fially their symptoms do not result from an accident or injury.
There are four main types of factitious disorder, according to the DXM-IV-TR: • Factitious disorder with mostly physical symptoms: Individuals claim to have symptoms related to a physical illness, such as symptoms of chest pain or stomach problems. • Factitious disorders with mostly psychological symptoms: patients mimic behavior that is typical of mental illness, for example schizophrenia. May appear confused, make absurd statements and report hallucinations. • Factitious disorder with both physical and psychological symptoms: patients produce