Essay --

FAKE IT TO MAKE IT: A FACTITIOUS DISORDER I. There have been people that love attention, and have taken it a little too far and would invent or inflict illnesses on themselves. A. A factitious disorder has been described as a disease in which a person convinces people and themselves that they have a disease, when in reality they do not. 1. Munchausen disorder, one type of factitious disorder, dates back to the 18th century when Baron Karl Friederick Hieronymus von Munchausen would tell entertaining but untrue tales of his past. 2. Some symptoms which have been known to appear in a patient with a factitious disorder are unbelievable, inconsistent, and have a long medical history in different hospitals or clinics. 3. Psychiatric help has been the main treatment offered, but sometimes when the level of the disorder has been harmful to the patient or others, they were hospitalized forcefully. 4. There’s been many symptoms that have are recognized as factitious, and though there are medications that have helped calm patients, the main way that they have help an individual has been with mental help. II. Traces of factitious disorder were seen back in Galen’s time, a famous Roman physician from around 200 AD. A. That is not however, where it was first named a disease, it was given the name Factitious by English physician named Gavin in a book he published in 1842. 1. Gavin wrote the first and most complete description of why people might do this to themselves. a) He listed a total of eight reasons. b) The first seven reasons were malingering because their reasons are to get something that is convenient to them out of it. c) The eighth reason he named was that people do it to get compassion or attention. 2. There are two main... ...y can hurt themselves and their families, they are forced into being hospitalized. 4. If the patient wants to be treated, then it has to come from them, or all the work would be done in vain because the person does not want to admit that they need help. V. A factitious disorder is when a person says that they have a disease, when in reality they do not. A. The two main types of factitious disorder are factitious disorder by proxy, which is when a person inflicts a disease on a person that they care for. B. There is also Munchausen's syndrome, in which a person causes the symptoms on themselves. C. They have physical symptoms like cuts, surgical scars and others. D. They also have mental symptoms, where they have created a sickness that even they, themselves believe. E. The only way to really help a person with a factitious disorder is by offering them mental help.