Julie Gregory

Marc D. Feldman

The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood

Sickened

Taken from bizarre cases of real patients, Playing Sick? is the first book to chronicle the devastating impact of phony illnesses--factitious disorders and Munchausen syndrome--on patients and caregivers alike. Based on years of research and clinical practice, Playing Sick? provides the clues that can help practitioners and family members recognize these disorders, avoid invasive procedures, and sort out the motives that drive people to hurt themselves and deceive others. With insight and years of hands-on experience, Feldman shows how to get these emotionally ill patients the psychiatric help they need.

Untangling the Web of Munchausen Syndrome, Munchausen by Proxy, Malingering & Factitious Disorder

Playing Sick?

Gregory P. Yates

Most of us can recall a time when we pretended to be sick to reap the benefits that go along with illness. By playing sick, we gained sympathy, care, and attention, and were excused from our responsibilities. Though doing so on occasion is considered normal, there are those who carry their deceptions to the extreme. In this book, Dr. Marc Feldman describes people’s strange motivations to fabricate or induce illness or injury to satisfy deep emotional needs. Doctors, family members, and friends are lured into a costly, frustrating, and potentially deadly web of deceit. From the mother who shaves her child’s head and tells her community he has cancer, to the co-worker who suffers from a string of incomprehensible "tragedies," to the false epilepsy victim who monopolizes her online support group, "disease forgery" is ever-present in the media and in many people’s lives. In Dying to be Ill: True Stories of Medical Deception, Dr. Feldman, with the assistance of Gregory Yates, has chronicled this fascinating world as well as the paths to healing. With insight developed from 25 years of hands-on experience, Dying to be Ill is sure to stand as a classic in the field.

True Stories of Medical Deception

Dying to be Ill

Jacqueline M. Feldman

Roxenne Smith

Stranger Than Fiction: When Our Minds Betray Us is a spellbinding invitation into the world of the human mind that will change our perceptions of mental illness forever. Despite the growing body of scientific discoveries into the nature of the human mind, the stigma attached to mental illness remains deeply entrenched in the general public's consciousness, the product of inaccurate information and centuries of mystery. In a simple conversational style, two distinguished clinicians, Drs. Marc and Jacqueline Feldman, discuss the complexities of mental disorders and their treatment. Using the metaphor of the lie of the mind, a disorder in which a person's thinking becomes unintentionally distorted, the authors approach mental illness from the perspective that these disorders are merely extreme variations of universally shared thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Stranger Than Fiction removes the artificial division separating the mentally ill from the general public and demystifies symptoms that often seem bizarre. On this journey through the human psyche, the Feldmans use vivid, enlightening, and often poignant cases from their own professional experience that dramatically illustrate how psychiatrists help patients liberate themselves from the mental conditions that imprison them. The reader is invited into therapy sessions and hospital rooms and receives an insider's view of the difficulties that each therapist confronts when treating disturbed patients. The authors show how clinical decisions often rely more on educated hunches than medical certainties and reveal that the practice of psychiatry is as much an art as it is a science. After finishing this unforgettable book, readers will better understand the true nature of mental illness and witness the joy that even the smallest triumph produces in patients and caregivers alike.

When Our Minds Betray Us

Stranger Than Fiction

Stuart J. Eisendrath

Factitious disorder presents one of the most challenging variants of psychopathology in medicine. The Spectrum of Factitious Disorders is the first book for professionals to offer a comprehensive overview of current thinking about patients who feign or induce illness -- in themselves or others -- to accrue the intangible benefits of the "sick" role. Attempts to influence factitious patients' behavior have been largely unsuccessful. This volume covers innovative techniques for treating such patients, stressing the need to treat them with acceptance and understanding. First-person accounts are used to illustrate the intense feelings mobilized in friends, family members, caregivers, and patients themselves as factitious disorders play out. The book also presents a management approach that emphasizes respect for the patient, no matter what the symptomatology. Using abundant case material, this revolutionary work aids mental health practitioners in understanding the phenomenon of "disease-forgery" and addresses its inherent management challenges. Notable contributors provide relevant information on ethical and legal issues in factitious disorders. The clinical features, detection, and management of factitious disorder by proxy are explored, along with comprehensive psychosocial assessment and legal issues in such cases.

The Spectrum of Factitious Disorders

Charles V. Ford

Toni Reinhold

Jenny's two-year battle with breast cancer was an inspiring lesson for all who knew her. Despite her progressive weakness and dramatic hair and weight loss, this courageous young woman managed to maintain a positive outlook, determined to make the most of what little time was left to her. And through it all, Jenny's family, friends, and coworkers lavished sympathy and attention on her, doing all they could to make her life as comfortable as possible. But gradually, as an intricate web of deceit unraveled, it became horribly clear to everyone that Jenny's illness was nothing but an elaborate hoax. Jenny's story is just one of the riveting accounts of factitious disorders vividly portrayed in Patient or Pretender. Recounting fascinating case histories, psychiatrists Marc D. Feldman and Charles V. Ford take us on a journey into the lives and minds of people whose craving for attention leads them to fake illnesses, sometimes to the point of death. The extremes to which some lactitious patients will go defy the imagination...and often medical knowledge as well. We read of people who inject themselves with bacteria to induce infections, who bleed themselves to produce anemia, who eat rat poison...whatever it takes to gain admission to a hospital. Others fabricate emotional symptoms, such as extreme depression, or engage in outlandish behavior to feign psychosis. We also read of people with Munchausen's syndrome, "professional patients" whose lives are spent traveling from hospital to hospital often successfully duping doctors into performing dangerous and expensive diagnostic and surgical procedures. Even more disturbing are the shocking tales of mothers with Munchausen by Proxy, who deliberately induce illnesses in their children in order to elicit sympathy or to play the role of heroic caregiver. Drs. Feldman and Ford recount these stories with compassion, offering profound insights into the workings of the bruised psyches of these "disease forgers." We learn about what compels these people to take extraordinary risks to obtain sympathy and emotional fulfillment. In addition, we learn about the warning signs that doctors look for and the various approaches to treatment. The authors also explore the toll taken on the family, friends, and health professionals who provide these "great pretenders" with emotional, medical, and financial support, as well as the enormous cost to society at large in unnecessary health costs. Above all, Patient or Pretender offers us profound insights into the human condition and a painful reminder of the universal need for love and recognition that informs so much of who we are and what we do.

Marc D. Feldman

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