اختلالات ساختگی در مغز و اعصاب: تجزیه و تحلیل از موارد گزارش

Factitious disorder (FD) is the deliberate production or simulation of symptoms in order to adopt the sick role. Objective The authors look at FD in the neurology setting. Method The authors examined documented, published cases. Results FD cases in neurology are strikingly different from those in other specialties in terms of their demographics. Whereas the paradigm of FD in medicine as a whole is of the socially stable female healthcare worker, neurology continues to report largely the classic itinerant “Munchausen's” type.

Reported neurological presentations of FD are proportionally common, but appear demographically dissimilar to reported cases from other specialties, where the “factitious nurse” is the most common presentation. We have suggested that this is because “factitious nurses” are being diagnosed with hysteria instead or they are avoiding neurological presentations, choosing instead to simulate disorders that do not carry the stigma of hysteria.