Factitious Disorder

A factitious disorder is a mental disorder in which a person, without a malingering motive, acts as if they have an illness by deliberately producing, feigning or exaggerating symptoms purely to attain, for themselves or for another, a patient's role; affected individuals may produce symptoms by contaminating urine samples, taking hallucinogens, or injecting fecal material to produce abscesses, among similar behaviors, and the word factitious derives from the Latin factitius, meaning human-made. Factitious disorder imposed on self, also called Munchausen syndrome, was for a time the umbrella term for such disorders, while factitious disorder imposed on another, also called Munchausen syndrome by proxy, describes a person deliberately producing, feigning or exaggerating symptoms in someone in their care; in either case the perpetrator's motive is to attain a patient's role, which distinguishes factitious disorder fundamentally from malingering, in which a person simulates illness to obtain a material benefit or avoid an obligation.