Factitious disorder is a mental health condition in which someone repeatedly acts as if they are ill or causes symptoms, even without clear external rewards such as money or avoiding work. Many people first hear about factitious disorder when repeated hospital visits, changing medical stories, or unexplained test results start to raise concern. The early symptoms of factitious disorder can include exaggerating problems, tampering with medicines or tests, or seeking frequent medical care, and the pattern may last for years if it is not recognized. It can affect adults of any gender, and it may also appear in a caregiver who makes another person seem ill, most often a child or dependent adult. Factitious disorder can be serious because it may lead to harmful procedures, severe injury, or rarely death, and treatment usually focuses on steady mental health care, a trusted care team, and support for related conditions like depression or personality difficulties.
How many people live with Factitious disorder?
Worldwide and U.S. population estimates for factitious disorder are not consistently reported by a single authoritative source. Major clinical references describe it as rare and likely underdiagnosed, so there is no reliable current count of how many people are living with it worldwide or in the United States (American Psychiatric Association, 2022; StatPearls, 2023).
Overview
Factitious disorderSymptoms
Factitious disorder involves deliberately faking, exaggerating, or causing illness, often to take on the sick role. Early symptoms of Factitious disorder can include dramatic but inconsistent stories, frequent hospital visits, changing symptoms, and eagerness for tests or treatment.
Outlook and prognosis
Factitious disorder often improves when people feel safe enough to accept steady mental health care. Progress can be uneven, with periods of relapse, but long-term support can reduce harmful medical visits, procedures, and distress.
Causes and risk factors
Factitious disorder has no single known cause. Risk may rise with childhood trauma or neglect, frequent illness or hospital stays, other mental health conditions, high stress, and sometimes healthcare work or a strong need for care and attention.
Genetic influences
For factitious disorder, genetics do not appear to be a main cause. No specific gene changes are known to drive it, and life experiences, trauma, and other mental health factors seem more important.
Diagnosis
Factitious disorder is diagnosed through a careful mental health evaluation, review of symptoms and medical history, and sometimes records from past care. There is no single test. Doctors also rule out other mental and physical health conditions first.
Treatment and drugs
Factitious disorder is usually treated with steady, nonjudgmental mental health care. Treatment often centers on talk therapy, building trust, and addressing stress, trauma, or other mental health conditions. Medicines may help with depression or anxiety, but they do not treat factitious disorder directly.
Symptoms
Factitious disorder can be hard to recognize because it often looks like a real physical or mental health problem. People with factitious disorder may describe severe or changing symptoms, but the pattern does not always fit test results, exam findings, or the usual course of an illness. Some may also make symptoms worse or create new ones, which can lead to repeated emergency visits, hospital stays, or procedures. The early symptoms of factitious disorder are often patterns around illness and healthcare use rather than one single complaint.
Reported problems may shift from one visit to the next or become more dramatic over time. The story can sound very believable, but important details may change when asked again.
Symptoms may seem severe even when blood work, scans, or physical exams do not fully support them. This does not prove factitious disorder on its own, so doctors look at the whole pattern over time.
Some people with factitious disorder may injure their skin, disturb wounds, or take substances to cause bleeding, vomiting, fever, or low blood sugar. These actions can cause real medical emergencies.
Wounds may reopen, infections may keep returning, or recovery may stall for reasons that are hard to explain. Sometimes this happens because an injury is being interfered with or treatment is not being followed.
How people usually first notice Factitious disorder?
How do people usually first notice factitious disorder? Often, the first clue is a pattern that feels hard to make sense of: someone has repeated medical problems, urgent symptoms, or dramatic health stories that do not fully match exam findings, test results, or how the illness would usually behave. Many living with factitious disorder come to medical attention after frequent hospital visits, symptoms that seem to return just after treatment, or a long history of seeing many clinicians, and what stands out most is not a single symptom but the repeated mismatch between what is reported and what doctors can confirm.
Types of Factitious disorder
Factitious disorder can look different depending on who is being placed in the sick role and how the behavior shows up over time. In medical terms, the main types of factitious disorder are imposed on self and imposed on another. Both involve deliberately falsifying, exaggerating, or causing illness, but the day-to-day pattern differs in important ways.
Imposed on self
This type means someone presents themselves as ill, injured, or impaired even when the symptoms are made up, exaggerated, or self-induced. Many living with factitious disorder imposed on self may report dramatic medical problems, tamper with tests, or seek repeated hospital care. The early symptoms of factitious disorder in this form can include inconsistent medical stories, symptoms that do not match exam findings, or illnesses that return when treatment should have helped.
Imposed on another
This type means someone causes, fabricates, or exaggerates health problems in another person, often a child or someone who depends on them for care. Loved ones may recognize certain types sooner than the person experiencing them. The warning signs often center on repeated unexplained illnesses, frequent medical visits, or symptoms that mainly appear when the caregiver is present.
Can I slow down the onset of symptoms?
Probably not in any proven way: for factitious disorder, a mental health condition where someone repeatedly acts ill or may even make themselves ill, there is no good evidence that lifestyle changes can meaningfully delay when symptoms start. Research has not shown that diet, exercise, sleep, or supplements prevent it, although early care for trauma, anxiety, depression, or substance use, along with steady mental health support and less stress, may help some people reduce risk or lessen how severe the problem becomes. There is no proven screening test or preventive medicine, but getting help early can still make a real difference in safety and support.
What genetics can tell you about symptoms
For factitious disorder, genetics cannot currently tell doctors which symptoms someone will show, how severe the behavior will be, or when it will begin. There is no known gene or genetic test that predicts this condition in a reliable way. While inherited traits linked to mental health, stress response, or personality may play a small background role in some people, symptoms are understood to be shaped much more by life experiences, emotional factors, and environment than by genetics alone.
Causes and risk factors
For many people with factitious disorder, the causes are complex and often linked to deep emotional distress. Risk factors for factitious disorder include childhood trauma, neglect, loss, and long periods of illness or medical care early in life. Depression, anxiety, personality disorders, and a family history of mental illness may also raise risk. Think of risk factors as pieces of a puzzle, not the whole picture. Stress, substance misuse, and working in health care can sometimes make the condition more likely or shape how it shows up.
What are the most common causes or risk factors?
The exact cause of factitious disorder is not fully known, and there is no clear strong genetic cause that has been proven. The risk may be higher in people who have lived through trauma, abuse, neglect, or major loss, or who had a serious illness or many hospital stays earlier in life. It is also more common in people with other mental health problems, such as depression, and in those who work in health care or know a lot about medical care.
Environmental and biological risk factors
There is no single explanation for factitious disorder, and the main risk factors for factitious disorder usually build over time. Being exposed to risks in your body or environment doesn’t mean illness is inevitable. In most cases, this condition is linked to a mix of early adversity, emotional vulnerability, and repeated contact with illness or medical care.
Abuse, neglect, or harsh and unpredictable caregiving are commonly reported in people with factitious disorder. Early trauma can shape how someone looks for comfort, safety, or attention when they are under stress.
A serious illness in childhood, repeated hospital stays, or many medical tests can leave a lasting mark. For some people, these experiences make illness feel closely tied to care, protection, or emotional connection.
Growing up around conflict, loss, or inconsistent caregiving can increase emotional strain over many years. In some people with factitious disorder, illness-related behavior may develop in the setting of these early disruptions.
Bereavement, trauma, or other overwhelming life events can raise risk, especially when earlier vulnerabilities are already present. Factitious disorder often appears in the context of more than one stressful experience rather than one single trigger.
Genetic risk factors
Factitious disorder has no proven single genetic cause. Current research suggests that if genes play a role, it is likely indirect and much less clear than in strongly inherited conditions. For many wondering whether factitious disorder runs in families, no clear pattern has been shown. Science continues to uncover how these elements interact.
No known gene: Researchers have not identified a gene or set of genes that clearly causes factitious disorder. Because of this, genetic testing is not used to diagnose factitious disorder or estimate risk.
No clear inheritance: Factitious disorder does not follow a known inherited pattern in families. If one relative has it, that does not mean it will be passed down in a predictable way.
Family history: A family history of other mental health conditions may point to shared inherited traits that slightly affect vulnerability. This link is indirect and not strong enough to predict who will develop factitious disorder.
Lifestyle risk factors
Factitious disorder does not have well-established lifestyle causes in the same way that conditions like heart disease or type 2 diabetes do. Still, some day-to-day behavior patterns can reinforce illness-focused behavior, increase contact with medical settings, and make recovery harder. When people ask about lifestyle risk factors for factitious disorder, it is more accurate to focus on habits that may maintain or worsen the condition rather than directly cause it.
Alcohol or drug misuse can worsen emotional instability, impulsive decisions, and poor judgment around health-related behavior. It may also complicate medical symptoms, making fabricated or self-induced illness harder to recognize and treat.
Relying on crisis-driven coping, avoidance, or self-harm instead of healthy emotional regulation can increase the urge to assume a sick role. High stress without effective coping skills may lead to more frequent symptom exaggeration or medical deception.
Chronic sleep loss can worsen mood, irritability, and impulse control, which may intensify maladaptive health-related behavior. Poor sleep can also increase fatigue and physical complaints, creating more opportunities for unnecessary medical attention.
Repeated doctor shopping, frequent emergency visits, and constant symptom monitoring can reinforce the cycle of factitious behavior. This pattern may strengthen identification with being ill and make psychiatric treatment harder to engage with.
Risk prevention
Factitious disorder can be hard to fully prevent, because it often grows out of deep emotional distress, trauma, or an unmet need for care and support. For many living with factitious disorder, prevention is more about lowering the chance of the pattern developing or worsening than stopping it with one single step. Prevention is flexible—it adapts to your life and health background. Early mental health care, steady support, and careful coordination of medical treatment can all help reduce risk.
Getting help early for anxiety, depression, trauma, or major stress may lower the risk of factitious disorder taking hold. When emotional pain is recognized sooner, people often have safer ways to ask for help and feel supported.
Many people with factitious disorder have a history of trauma, neglect, or unstable relationships, so trauma-focused therapy can be an important protective step. Working through these experiences may reduce the urge to use illness behaviors as a way to cope.
Learning ways to handle stress, loneliness, shame, or relationship conflict can reduce reliance on harmful illness-related behaviors. This may include therapy, support groups, journaling, or calming routines that help during emotionally intense moments.
Stable, trustworthy relationships can make a real difference for people at risk of factitious disorder. Feeling seen and cared for in everyday life may lessen the need to seek attention through medical crises.
Can you prevent Factitious disorder?
There is no sure way to prevent factitious disorder, and experts do not yet know how to stop it from developing in every case. Getting early help for emotional trauma, long-term stress, depression, anxiety, or other mental health struggles may lower the chance of it becoming a bigger problem for some people, but this is not guaranteed.
Transmission
Factitious disorder is not infectious, so it cannot be passed from one person to another. If you are wondering how Factitious disorder spreads, it does not spread through air, touch, food, sex, blood, or everyday contact at home, school, or work.
Factitious disorder is a mental health condition, not an infection. It also is not known to follow a simple parent-to-child inheritance pattern, so for most families the concern is support and treatment rather than contagion.
When to test your genes
For factitious disorder, genetic testing is not used for early detection and does not guide treatment. Care is based on careful psychiatric assessment, building trust, and looking for related mental health conditions, not on inherited risk testing.
Diagnosis
Factitious disorder is diagnosed by looking closely at patterns over time rather than with one single lab test or scan. People living with factitious disorder may seem to have changing symptoms, frequent hospital visits, or test results that do not fully match the medical picture. Doctors usually begin by reviewing symptoms, past treatment, and the diagnosis of factitious disorder alongside other possible explanations. Tests may feel repetitive, but each one helps rule out different causes.
A doctor reviews current symptoms, past illnesses, surgeries, hospital stays, and the treatments that have already been tried. They look for patterns such as repeated emergency visits, symptoms that change quickly, or a history that does not fully fit the exam findings.
A careful exam helps check whether the body findings match the symptoms being reported. This can also uncover signs of self-inflicted injury, tampering with wounds, or other clues that need urgent medical care.
Blood work, urine tests, imaging, and other lab tests may help rule out common conditions. In factitious disorder, the main goal of testing is usually to exclude true illness and compare results with the overall clinical picture.
Doctors often compare current information with prior clinic, hospital, pharmacy, and procedure records. Differences between reported history and documented findings can be an important part of making the diagnosis.
How is Factitious disorder diagnosed?
Factitious disorder is diagnosed by a doctor or mental health professional after looking at the full pattern over time, including symptoms that are made up, exaggerated, or sometimes self-caused without a clear outside benefit such as money, drugs, or time off work. They usually talk with the person, review past medical records, and may do exams or tests to rule out other physical or mental health conditions that could better explain what is happening.
Stages of Factitious disorder
Factitious disorder does not have defined progression stages. That is because it is not an illness that reliably moves from one set phase to the next over time; instead, patterns can come and go, and the way it shows up may differ a lot from one person to another. Doctors usually start with a conversation about symptoms, past medical care, and day-to-day changes, then look closely for signs that reported problems do not fully match exam findings or test results. Diagnosing factitious disorder can take time, and monitoring often involves careful review of medical records, repeated follow-up visits, and assessment of behaviors that may point to early symptoms of factitious disorder or ongoing risk.
Outlook and prognosis
The outlook for people with factitious disorder is often guarded because the condition tends to be chronic, with repeated episodes of symptom fabrication or self-induced illness and frequent relapse if treatment is not sustained. Prognosis is generally better when the person can engage consistently with one coordinated mental health team, develop insight, and receive treatment for coexisting conditions such as depression, anxiety, personality disorders, or substance use. Many patients have significant social, occupational, and relationship difficulties over time, and they may undergo unnecessary tests, procedures, or hospitalizations that can cause real physical harm. Mortality data are limited, but the disorder can be life-threatening when it involves severe self-injury, tampering with medical treatments, infections, or complications from invasive interventions. Outcomes are usually poorer when there is little insight, frequent doctor-shopping, or refusal of psychiatric care. Even so, some people improve with long-term psychotherapy, careful care coordination, and a nonconfrontational treatment approach.
Long-term effects
Factitious disorder can have lasting effects on health, relationships, and everyday stability because repeated illness behavior often leads to ongoing medical and emotional strain. Many living with factitious disorder spend long periods moving between symptoms, hospital visits, and recovery from tests or treatments they did not medically need. In medical terms, these are sometimes called late effects or chronic symptoms, and the long-term effects of factitious disorder can differ a lot from one person to another.
Repeated tests, procedures, or medicines can cause real injuries, infections, scarring, or drug side effects over time. For many, this can mean new health problems that continue even when the original reported illness was not present.
Some people with factitious disorder have repeated emergency visits, admissions, or specialist appointments over many years. This can disrupt work, school, finances, and daily routines, especially when care becomes a central part of life.
Trust can become damaged with family, friends, and healthcare teams when symptoms are exaggerated, made up, or self-induced. Over time, daily routines may revolve around conflict, worry, or distance from loved ones.
Factitious disorder often exists alongside depression, anxiety, trauma-related symptoms, or personality-related difficulties. These problems can become long lasting and may worsen feelings of isolation, shame, or distress.
How is it to live with Factitious disorder?
Living with factitious disorder can be exhausting and isolating, because the drive to appear ill or injured is tied to deep emotional distress, even when the medical stories or symptoms are not fully explained by a health condition. Daily life may become centered on doctor visits, tests, hospital stays, or recovery from unnecessary treatments, which can strain work, school, finances, and a person’s sense of trust in their own body and relationships. For family, friends, and clinicians, this can be confusing and painful, yet it is still a mental health condition that needs compassionate, structured psychiatric care rather than blame.
Treatment and drugs
Factitious disorder is usually treated with long-term mental health care, with the main goal of reducing harmful behaviors, building a more trusting relationship with the care team, and addressing any anxiety, depression, trauma, or other mental health problems that may be present. Treatment often looks different for each person, but it often includes regular therapy, careful coordination between doctors, and a calm, nonjudgmental approach that avoids unnecessary tests, procedures, or hospital stays. There is no medicine that directly cures factitious disorder, but drugs may be used for related symptoms such as depression, anxiety, trouble sleeping, or mood problems when these are part of the picture. For many people, treatment begins with small daily steps, such as keeping regular appointments, having one main doctor oversee care, and making a plan for what to do when the urge to seek medical attention feels hard to manage. Early treatment for factitious disorder can lower the risk of repeated medical harm, and support from family or friends can make it easier to stay engaged with care.
Can you cure Factitious disorder?
There is no quick or guaranteed cure for factitious disorder, but many people can improve with steady mental health care. Treatment usually focuses on building a trusting relationship with a therapist, lowering harmful health-related behaviors, and helping with related problems like depression, anxiety, or stress. For many living with factitious disorder, this can mean fewer medical crises and a safer, more stable daily life over time.
Non-drug treatment
Living with factitious disorder can mean repeated medical visits, distress, and strain at home or work, even when the person may not fully understand why the pattern keeps happening. Treatment usually centers on steady, respectful mental health care rather than confrontation or punishment. Managing this condition often works best when one trusted team coordinates care and focuses on safety, stress, and the reasons behind the behavior. Recovery can be gradual, and support is often aimed at building healthier ways to cope while reducing unnecessary tests or procedures.
One-to-one counseling is the main non-drug treatment for factitious disorder. It can help people recognize patterns, manage stress, and build safer ways to ask for help and support.
A consistent doctor or small care team can help avoid repeated emergency visits, duplicate testing, and mixed messages. This steady approach is often important when early symptoms of factitious disorder include frequent medical visits with changing or hard-to-explain complaints.
Family or couples sessions may help rebuild trust and lower conflict at home. Loved ones can learn how to support treatment without accidentally reinforcing harmful illness-related behaviors.
Clear treatment agreements and regular follow-up visits can create structure and reduce crisis-driven care. Think of these approaches as a way to keep care predictable, safer, and less focused on invasive procedures.
Your genes may have an impact on how drugs work for you
For factitious disorder, there is no standard medicine that treats the condition itself, so genetic differences usually do not play a major role in care. Some people living with factitious disorder may also be treated for related problems like depression, anxiety, or trouble sleeping, and in those cases inherited differences can sometimes affect how well a medicine works or how likely it is to cause side effects. Even so, genetic testing is not a routine part of treating factitious disorder, and care is usually centered on steady mental health support and a trusting relationship with the treatment team.
Pharmacological treatments
For people living with factitious disorder, there is no medicine that reliably treats the disorder itself. Medications are usually used only when someone also has conditions like depression, anxiety, insomnia, or severe mood symptoms that need care. Not everyone responds to the same medication in the same way. In practice, medications for factitious disorder are chosen cautiously, because the main treatment is usually ongoing mental health support rather than a drug alone.
Medicines such as sertraline, fluoxetine, escitalopram, and venlafaxine may be used if factitious disorder happens alongside depression or anxiety. These drugs can help with low mood, constant worry, panic symptoms, or obsessive thinking, but they do not treat the core pattern of factitious disorder itself.
Short-term options such as trazodone or melatonin are sometimes used when poor sleep is making daily life harder. Sometimes medicines are taken short-term, while others are used long-term, and sleep drugs are usually used carefully to avoid dependence or misuse.
Drugs like lithium, valproate, or lamotrigine may be considered if someone also has bipolar disorder or major mood swings. They are not standard treatment for factitious disorder alone, but they can help when another diagnosed mood condition is clearly present.
Medicines such as quetiapine, olanzapine, risperidone, or aripiprazole may be used when there is severe agitation, psychosis, or another serious mental health condition alongside factitious disorder. Doctors usually prescribe these only for specific symptoms or coexisting illnesses, not as a routine treatment for factitious disorder.
Genetic influences
When factitious disorder affects a family, people often wonder whether there is an inherited reason behind it. It’s natural to ask whether family history plays a role. At this point, there is no clear evidence that factitious disorder is caused by a single gene or passed down in a simple inherited pattern, and genetic testing is not used to diagnose it. What may be inherited instead is a broader tendency toward certain mental health traits, such as problems with mood, anxiety, stress response, or personality style, which can shape vulnerability but do not directly cause factitious disorder.
For many living with factitious disorder, early life experiences, trauma, relationship patterns, and other mental health conditions appear to matter more than genetics alone. So if you are asking whether factitious disorder runs in families, the most accurate answer is that genes may play a small, indirect part, but they are only one part of a much bigger picture.
Is Factitious disorder genetic?
For factitious disorder, genetics do not appear to be a main cause. No specific gene changes are known to drive it, and life experiences, trauma, and other mental health factors seem more important.
Having a genetic risk is not necessarily a diagnosis
Genetic variants are a usual part of being human and are common across the general population. Most of them do not directly affect health and simply reflect normal human differences. For many genes, carrying a variant associated with a condition suggests a possible link rather than a definite diagnosis, especially when several genes and environmental factors are involved. In some situations, though, a single well-understood variant in a particular gene can be enough to confirm a diagnosis.
Pharmacogenetics—how genetics influence drug effects
For people living with factitious disorder, treatment usually depends more on trust, regular mental health care, and addressing safety concerns than on finding a single medication. There is no proven medicine that treats factitious disorder itself, but some people may also take drugs for depression, anxiety, insomnia, or other conditions that happen at the same time. Genetics is only one factor, but inherited differences can affect how quickly the body handles certain medicines and how strongly side effects show up, so one antidepressant may help one person while another feels groggy, jittery, or gets little benefit. In those situations, genetic testing for medication response in factitious disorder may occasionally help guide drug choice or dose, especially after side effects or several failed medication trials. Still, this kind of testing does not diagnose factitious disorder and does not replace careful psychiatric care, because life stress, other illnesses, substance use, and the treatment relationship often matter just as much. For many living with factitious disorder, the main role of genetics is indirect: it may shape response to medicines used alongside therapy, not the core treatment plan.
Interactions with other conditions
For many living with factitious disorder, health problems do not happen in isolation, and that can make care much more complicated. It often occurs alongside depression, anxiety, trauma-related conditions, personality disorders, or substance use problems, so mood changes, self-harm, or drug side effects can blur the picture. Doctors call it a comorbidity when two conditions occur together. Someone might seem to have worsening pain, infections, or bleeding from a medical illness, but in some cases the symptoms are being caused or made worse by factitious disorder itself, which can lead to unnecessary tests, procedures, or hospital stays. This can also overlap with real physical disease, meaning early symptoms of factitious disorder may be missed because everyone is focused on another diagnosis. Care usually works best when mental health and medical teams communicate closely, so both emotional needs and physical safety are addressed at the same time.
How genes can cause diseases
Humans have more than 20,000 genes, each carrying out one or a few specific functions in the body. One gene instructs the body to digest lactose from milk, another tells the body how to build strong bones and another prevents the body's cells from beginning to multiply uncontrollably and developing into cancer. As all of these genes combined are the building instructions for our body, a defect in one of these genes can have severe health consequences.
Through decades of genetic research, we know the genetic code of any healthy/functional human gene. We have also identified that in certain positions on a gene, some individuals may have a different genetic letter from the one you have. We call these hotspots "Genetic Variations" or "Variants" in short. In many cases, studies have been able to show that having the genetic letter "G" in the position makes you healthy, but having the letter "A" in the same position disrupts the gene function and causes a disease. Genopedia allows you to view these variants in genes and summarizes all that we know from scientific research, which genetic letters (Genotype) have good or bad consequences on your health or on your traits.
What other conditions can cause similar symptoms to Factitious disorder?
Doctors may also consider somatic symptom disorder, where someone has very real symptoms and distress without making them up, and malingering, where illness is faked for a clear outside gain such as money, drugs, housing, or time off work. Real health problems can also be mistaken for factitious disorder, especially conditions that come and go or are hard to explain, such as seizures, long-term pain, stomach problems, depression, or anxiety. Because these can overlap, careful medical and mental health assessment is often needed.
History
Long before modern psychiatry, doctors wrote about people who repeatedly appeared ill or seemed to trigger symptoms in themselves without a clear physical explanation. These accounts were often incomplete, and many mixed judgment with observation, so the picture was blurry. Even so, they show that behaviors now linked with factitious disorder have been noticed for centuries, often in hospital settings where repeated admissions, changing stories, or unexplained test results puzzled medical teams.
A clearer medical description came in the mid-20th century. In 1951, the British physician Richard Asher used the term Munchausen syndrome for a severe pattern in which someone persistently fabricated or induced illness and moved from one doctor or hospital to another. Medical classifications changed as doctors realized this dramatic form was only part of a wider condition. Over time, the broader term factitious disorder became standard, including both factitious disorder imposed on self and factitious disorder imposed on another, where a caregiver causes or falsifies illness in someone else, usually a child.
As understanding improved, the focus slowly shifted away from seeing factitious disorder simply as “lying” and toward recognizing it as a serious mental health condition. Many living with factitious disorder have complex emotional distress, and some may also have other mental health conditions or a history of trauma, although this is not true for everyone. This change mattered in day-to-day care: instead of treating the behavior as only a disciplinary problem, clinicians began to see the need for careful assessment, mental health support, and protection from unnecessary tests or procedures.
Today, the history of factitious disorder helps explain why diagnosis can still be difficult. Someone may seem convincing at first, especially if symptoms come and go or if medical records are scattered across different clinics. Awareness of past misunderstandings can help families and healthcare teams approach the condition with more care, less blame, and a clearer sense that support and safety both matter.