Question

What is factitious disorder?

What is malingering? How are factitious disorder and factitious disorder by proxy different?

Do you feel individuals who exhibit factitious disorder by proxy should face legal consequences?

Answer 1

Factitious Disorder

Factitious Disorder is a psychological disorder is which the suffering individual acts as they are inflicted by some sort of medical or mental illness, when actually they are not suffering from any illness. They exagerate their symptoms while reporting to the medical practitioners or hurt themselves to produce the symptoms not for any selfish gains, but because they actually need themselves to be seen as injured or ill.This disorder is associated with severe emotional stress or trauma.

Factitious Disorder by proxy

Factitious disorder by proxy is a mental disorder in which the sufferer wants others to be seen as ill (physically or mentally). This disorder occurs when the individuals wants the person whom they are caring for to be ill, for this they produce false diagnosis, or lies about the conditions of the person's under their care or harm them to produce symptoms, especially children under the age of six or the elderly. The sufferers of this mental disorder does these things to gain the attention for their devotion and not any concrete selfish gains.

Because this is a mental disorder, the individuals suffering from this disorder should be intervened with appropriate treatment plans for it instead of making them to face legal consequences. The requirement is have immediate interventions that would help the individuals to live a normal life.

DSM 5 places Factitious Disorder and Factitious Disorder by proxy under the title "somatic symptoms and related disorders"

Malingering

Malingering is similar to factitious disorder, that is, the individual produce false diagnosis, lie about the symptoms or exagerate them or harm themselves to produce symptoms, but with a difference that they have clear, selfish, concrete motivations for doing so. While factitious disorders are mental illness, malingering is done for financial gains as insurance frauds, to avoid obligations at workplace,or to avoid criminal proceedings.