What Is Factitious Disorder?
4. How Are Symptoms Organized?
The current DSM has all of these symptoms categorized as factitious disorder with no distinctions. However, it can be helpful to look at the four historical categories to organize common symptoms. These symptoms can be displayed together or independently and don’t always follow these strict categories.
Common psychological symptoms include reports of hallucinations, mimicked schizophrenia and other bizarre behaviors that the individual claims are related to mental illness. The most common physical symptoms are reports of chest and stomach pain or fever. Finally, the most common factitious disorder by proxy symptom is a mother intentionally harming an infant to gain attention. Any of these symptoms can be brought on through self-harm or simply fabricated after research about the specific illnesses being presented.
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