Factitious Disorder: Is Lying a Mental Illness?

Do you know someone that tells perpetual lies? I do not mean a little untruth now and then, I mean lying all the time about illnesses or accidents. It may be more than stretching the truth, it may be a mental state called factitious disorder.

A person with factitious disorder will purposely create or exaggerate symptoms of illnesses. They usually go about this in diverse ways. They can lie about an illness and/or fake symptoms of illnesses or injuries. In some cases, they actually hurt themselves or alter diagnostic studies, such as contaminating a urine specimen.

The reasons behind the actions are to feign the role as a "patient." This will assure them of receiving attention, nurturing, and sympathy that they feel they are powerless to obtain in other ways. Some factitious disorder patients will reach as far as taking hallucinogens and even inject themselves with bacteria to produce infections.

Factitious disorder and Munchausen Syndrome are closely related. Munchausen Syndrome is a psychiatric disorder where a person fakes disease, illness, or psychological trauma in order to draw attention or sympathy to him or herself. Malingering differentiates from factious disorder because the person fakes illness to attain external gains such as drugs or disability payments. Factitious disorder is diagnosed by the absence of malingering.

Diagnosing factitious disorder can be very complicated due to other disorders that closely resemble it such as:

• Conversion disorder - this is a patient is unaware that their symptoms are not medically caused.
• Hypochondrias - this is better known as the person being a hypochondriac. The person really believes they have a particular disorder and seek multiple avenues for medical treatment.
• Somatization disorder - here a medical examination detects the presence of physical symptoms that cannot be directly linked to a medical condition.

The central criteria for diagnosing factitous disorder is the premeditated faking of physical or psychological symptoms where they are in search of attention without any signs of physical gains.

Possible warning signs of factitous disorder

• Dramatic but conflicting medical history.
• Vague symptoms that are not controllable and develop into more severe or change once treatment has begun.
• Predictable relapses following a recovery in health.
• Extensive intelligence of hospital or medical terminology.
• Displaying textbook descriptions of illnesses.
• Numerous surgical scars.
• Symptoms that occur when alone or not in the presence of others.
• A history of going to many hospitals, clinics, and doctor offices in the town they live and surrounding cities.

Treatment for factitious disorder

The first thing that is required is to modify the person's behavior and diminish their misuse or overuse of medical resources. After this, treatment is aimed at any prime psychological issues that maybe the origin of the behavior. The primary treatment is psychotherapy using cognitive-behavioral techniques focusing on changing the thinking and behavior of the individual.