What are the Differences Between Somatic Symptom Disorder, Factitious Disorder, & Malingering?

hello this is dr. grande today we'll be talking about the differences between somatic symptom disorder factitious disorder and malingering and all three of these disorders have symptoms or symptoms are presented that can't be explained medically so we're talking about somatic symptom disorder we're going to see someone worried about physical symptoms that can't be explained so they have persistent high anxiety about these symptoms they put excessive time and energy into thinking about these symptoms and there's disproportionate and persistent thoughts about how serious the symptoms may be what they may indicate the symptoms themselves for this disorder have a wide range there's a number of different types of pain that the person can feel and they are genuinely experiencing these symptoms also there can be dizziness fatigue shortness of breath vomiting muscle weakness nausea and a variety of other symptoms we wouldn't consider pain but of course they're very unpleasant well I heard that there are some disorders where they don't really experience some of those physiological symptoms what are those right so as I mentioned with somatic symptom disorder the person who has this genuinely experiences the symptoms if the symptoms are faked if they're not real that would likely be either factitious disorder or malingering now a factitious disorder is an actual mental health disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and this is where somebody pretends to have symptoms to gain sympathy this is a deliberate act lying is involved here and usually some of this disorder agrees to any number of tests including invasive tests that are designed to figure out what illness they might have they'll go through extremes to appear ill as well including hurting themselves they'll become upset typically when there confronted with evidence that shows that they don't actually have symptoms so malingering is a different type of condition all together it's not a mental health disorder it's what we call a V code so it can be the focus of clinical attention but it's not officially an actual mental health disorder and malingering is fairly similar to factitious disorder except with malingering there's an external game it's also deliberate just like with factitious disorder and somebody who's malingering may avoid the painful tests that somebody with a factitious disorder would not avoid we can think of factitious disorder so i have this disorder doesn't really have anything to gain other than sympathy by faking these symptoms or is it some of malingering does have something to gain how can we tell if a client is telling the truth about the symptoms that they're having that's a great question when we start talking about somatic symptom disorder and factitious disorder and malingering it gets into a delicate situation we want the best for clients we want to diagnose them accurately and we certainly don't want to accuse the client of faking symptoms a lot of times when somebody has symptoms of course they're telling the truth so these disorders like factitious disorder and somatic symptom disorder are fairly rare so with somatic symptom disorder of course they really have these symptoms so it's fairly straightforward if they meet the criteria we would diagnose them and of course try to help them with factitious disorder it's not always a straightforward again they're lying about the symptoms and if we accuse them of lying a lot of times we'll get defensive Mis and we're not helping them so we want to accurately diagnose and of course we want to be sensitive the fact that when somebody's lying they're probably not gonna want to admit that there is a pathology here with factitious disorder though they're looking for sympathy they're distressed there's anxiety so an accurate diagnosis could lead to treatment it would help them so it gets into a tough area there is no perfect answer for that question what is the treatment that would be necessary for either fictitious or malingering if they are just lying and they're adamant about the line well malingering is a V code and that means we could treat that typically that is difficult to treat because that is deliberate lying for external gain but perhaps a intervention like cognitive behavioral therapy to help somebody become aware of their thoughts and their behaviors and their motivation would help and probably the same thing would help with factitious disorder although a factitious disorder is an actual mental health disorder the individual there is looking for sympathy so again we might be able to connect the faking symptoms with a sympathy looking at like a cognitive behavioral stance and try to help them finish that connection to complete that connection and realize why they're behaving the way they are to help gain some insight and then eventually to help them to avoid faking symptoms so they can begin a road to recovery

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 14,772

Keywords: Somatic Symptom Disorder, somatic symptom, somatic, Factitious Disorder, factitious, Malingering, lying, faking symptoms, V code, fake symptoms, malinger, Hypochondriasis, Hypochondria, Hypochondriac, what is somatic symptom disorder, what is malingering, what is factitious disorder, preoccupation, excessive checking, medical condition, health anxiety, genetic, treatment, etiology, dsm, disorder, mental health disorder, mental health, counselor, counseling

Id: OqyNfrnerqs

Length: 5min 26sec (326 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 26 2017