Unmasking and Managing Factitious Disorder in Primary and Secondary Care

Carlo Lazzari^1*, Georgios Mousailidis², Ahmed Shoka² & Basavaraja Papanna²

¹Department of Psychiatry, International Centre for Healthcare and Medical Education (ICHME), United Kingdom
²Department of General Adult Psychiatry, Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust, United Kingdom

Dr. Carlo Lazzari, Department of Psychiatry, International Centre for Healthcare and Medical Education, United Kingdom.

Keywords: Factitious Disorder; Munchausen Syndrome; Borderline Personality Disorder; Management

Abstract

Factitious Disorder (FD) represents a rare and challenging condition in primary and secondary care. The complexity of presentation of patients who are fabricating, or exaggerating illnesses requires an interprofessional approach to identify and treat FD successfully. The current article explores the critical routes for diagnosis and management of a disorder which can lead to unnecessary medical and surgical investigations with the risk of iatrogenic side effects or life-threatening outcomes if it remains misdiagnosed.

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (CC BY 4.0).