Factitious disorder is a highly confusing condition that is difficult to treat, understand, and diagnose. People with factitious disorders essentially induce symptoms of a certain disease or condition in order to make it look like they have the condition. For instance, if you have factitious disorder and believe that you have the flu, you will deliberately try to get sick with flu-like symptoms.
In addition to being confusing, factitious disorders are dangerous mental health conditions. People with the condition can take things too far and make themselves sick beyond healing. It is also possible that people with factitious disorders undergo dangerous, risky, and painful tests and treatments. Additionally, people with factitious disorders often do not think they have a problem. Therefore, it is up to those around them to help them get the treatment they need.
While all mental health conditions require a certain amount of understanding and patience, factitious disorders require much more. Because people with the condition deliberately make themselves sick and do not think they are the problem, it takes a great deal of tact to convince them of their problem.
In most cases, if you try to convince someone they have factitious disorder, they will get very angry and not listen. Therefore, proceeding with patience is a necessity, and it will be important to treat the medical condition the patient has self-induced before you treat the mental component that caused it.
Psychotherapy or talk therapy is an important component of treating factitious disorders. Psychotherapy can help a person understand that their condition was self-inflicted and unnecessary and that repeating it could result in death or serious injury.
The overall goal of psychotherapy is to help someone understand why they have factitious disorder and how it affects them. Once they understand that they are responsible for their own illness, there is a higher probability that they will not have a second occurrence.
Most factitious disorders are firsthand, which means that someone thinks they have an illness, so they deliberately make themselves sick. However, this can also happen in the form of a parent believing their child has a condition, and so they deliberately give them that condition. This is a serious and troubling form of factitious disorder because children are often unable to advocate for themselves and do not understand why their parents are hurting them.
Factitious disorders of this nature require intense family therapy so that other family members know how to respond to this type of behavior. In serious cases, it may be necessary to temporarily remove the child from the home until the parent or parents can get the help they need.
Once the medical problem is treated and the person with a factitious disorder is out of the woods, doctors should focus on patient education. They need to help people with this mental disorder understand that their condition was self-induced because of the health decisions they made. While this is not always possible, it is a necessary step toward long-term healing.
Factitious disorders are serious mental health problems that require both physical and mental medical assistance. People with this disorder are not making themselves sick for any particular purpose, such as for insurance or monetary gain. They truly do not know why they are sick or realize that they are hurting themselves. Therefore, for their own safety, it is paramount that they get the help they need.