Playing Sick?: Untangling the Web of Munchausen Syndrome, Munchausen by Proxy, Malingering, and Factitious Disorder

When a person fakes illness or injury to satisfy emotional needs, doctors and family members are lured into a costly, frustrating, and potentially deadly web of deceit. Taken from bizarre cases of real patients,Playing Sick?is the first book to chronicle the devastating impact of phony illnesses--factitious disorders and Munchausen syndrome--on patients and caregivers alike. Psychiatrist Marc Feldman describes patients' strange motivations, from malingerers who invent chronic back pain to avoid work to mothers who demand major abdominal surgery for their healthy children because they derive perverse pleasure from medical attention. Self-induced bleeding, fake fevers, and even a bogus asthma attack so convincing that doctors rush the patient to ICU are the stock in trade of patients with these disorders. Practitioners are deeply disturbed by these patients, angry about the time and resources they consume but nervous about confronting them with the truth. Based on years of researchand clinical practice,Playing Sick?provides the clues that can help practitioners and family members recognize these disorders, avoid invasive procedures, and sort out the motives that drive people to hurt themselves and deceive others. With insight and years of hands-on experience, Feldman shows how to get these emotionally ill patients the psychiatric help they need.