BACKGROUND Factitious disorder (FD) is the deliberate production or simulation of symptoms in order to adopt the sick role. OBJECTIVE The authors look at FD in the neurology setting. METHOD The authors examined documented, published cases. RESULTS FD cases in neurology are strikingly different from those in other specialties in terms of their demographics. Whereas the paradigm of FD in me...

Although many psychiatric diseases have somatic manifestations, some focus on fears or delusions of infection. When a patient with a psychiatric basis for an apparent infection presents to an infectious disease physician, the physician may find the problem confusing, amusing, and ultimately frustrating until the psychiatric basis for disease is recognized. Some of these psychiatric disorders ca...

Factitious disorder is a rare psychiatric illness characterized by the willful and deceptive induction of illness for the purpose of assuming the sick role. It presents a substantial diagnostic challenge, as patients often go to great lengths to conceal their deception. Accordingly, its presence in the full spectrum of gastrointestinal diseases is likely underappreciated. While factitious gastr...

Homicidal ideation is often fabricated or embellished by psychiatric patients in both the emergency room and inpatient settings. Typically, this symptom is malingered to achieve short-term hospital admission and temporary relief from complications of substance abuse, homelessness, and illicit activities. Very rarely, a patient may feign homicidal intent for the primary purpose of remaining in t...

The term medically unexplained symptoms refers to a clinical presentation where the child's symptoms and impairment cannot be explained by any known organic pathology, and may include conversion disorders, somatoform pain disorders, factitious disorder, and factitious disorder by proxy. In this case study, we present our treatment of a 9-year-old girl with a 2-year history of medically unexplai...

OBJECTIVE The goal of this study was to determine the frequency of dissociative disorders in Dutch psychiatric inpatients. METHOD During a period of 12 months, 122 consecutively admitted adult psychiatric patients were screened with the Dissociative Experiences Scale. Patients scoring 25 and higher and a random selection of patients scoring lower than 25 were blindly interviewed with the Stru...

OBJECTIVE To establish the diagnostic performance of the prolonged fasting test in patients suspected of insulinoma. METHODS We included all patients who were referred to our department between August 1995 and August 2006 with a clinical suspicion of insulinoma. Insulinoma was diagnosed by a positive Whipple's triad during the prolonged fast in combination with an insulin/C-peptide ratio belo...

Factitious disorder (FD) is poorly understood because of the elusiveness of sufferers. What is known is based on speculation from observational case studies and this is evident by the manifold diagnostic and treatment issues associated with FD. This study sought to fill the gap in the literature and overcome the elusiveness of FD sufferers by analysing their text communications in two online co...

Psychometric symptom validity assessment is becoming increasingly part and parcel of psychological and neuropsychological assessments. An unresolved and rarely addressed issue concerns the differentiation between factitious and malingered symptom presentations: present-day symptom validity tests can assess whether an examinee presents with noncredible symptomatology, but not why an examinee doe...