Factious Disorder

yanksrule31 wrote:Hello all, I am trying to help a client's family and am looking for any resources or books you could point out about factious disorder in children and teens.
Thanks!

A factious disorder is a so-called mental disorder, whereby a person feigns to have a disease or illness. This could be for financial gains as in the case of a person suing an other for compensation for an alleged harm done. It often happens in the case PTSD where the state or the army is being sued for PTSD. Here, there seems to be a DELIBERATE action on the part of that person. But PTSD is a genuine mental illness, not dissimilar from depression. See here.

Sometimes having hypochondria - or having an irrational fear of being sick - could be seen a factious disorder. I do not consider hypochondria having an unreasonable fear of illness, but regard this as a genuine illness.
See:
Hypochondria and Hypoglycemia

That leaves one with the possibility that a person compulsively feigns to be ill for a number of reasons. One may be to draw attention to the self, in which case this would point to a low self-esteem. Or it could be a form of OCD, which is also a genuine disease.