A case of Munchausen syndrome presented with both factitious trauma and factitious haemophilia. He was treated inappropriately with factor VIII concentrate before the history of the presenting complaint could be validated. Clinical suspicion remains the most important aid to diagnosis.

Patients may present to the emergency department with symptoms that are simulated or intentionally produced. The reasons that cause this behavior define two distinct varieties: factitious disorders and malingering. Factitious disorders are characterized by symptoms or signs that are intentionally produced or feigned by the patient in the absence of apparent external incentives. Factitious disor...

Among those claims that trivialize true sexual harassment is a type that the author has come to recognize as factitious (i.e., prompted by the lure of victim status). Women who file factitious sexual harassment cases usually voice their allegations in a very convincing manner and, in the presence of contradictory findings, present a diagnostic challenge. Forensic clinicians must be able to reco...

A 20-mo-old girl was brought to our department by her mother because of breast enlargement. She was diagnosed with premature thelarche. One month later, she returned to our hospital with a complaint of vaginal bleeding. During the subsequent 6 mo, her vaginal bleeding recurred every month while her breast development disappeared. We performed laboratory tests and imaging. At the end of 6 mo, we...

The term medically unexplained symptoms refers to a clinical presentation where the child's symptoms and impairment cannot be explained by any known organic pathology, and may include conversion disorders, somatoform pain disorders, factitious disorder, and factitious disorder by proxy. In this case study, we present our treatment of a 9-year-old girl with a 2-year history of medically unexplai...

OBJECTIVE The goal of this study was to determine the frequency of dissociative disorders in Dutch psychiatric inpatients. METHOD During a period of 12 months, 122 consecutively admitted adult psychiatric patients were screened with the Dissociative Experiences Scale. Patients scoring 25 and higher and a random selection of patients scoring lower than 25 were blindly interviewed with the Stru...

BACKGROUND Factitious disorder (FD) presumably manifests at an early age, but epidemiological and clinical data about pediatric FD are still lacking. OBJECTIVE The authors sought to study prevalence data of FD among referrals to a child-and-adolescent consultation-liaison service (CLS). METHOD Authors conducted a retrospective survey of FD on 1,684 patients who were referred to the CLS from...

Munchausen by proxy is a disorder in which a child is victimized through a form of child abuse called pediatric condition falsification (PCF). PCF has been documented for psychological and psychiatric conditions including one such form presented here in which educational disabilities are the focus of falsification. Parents meet their own self-serving needs through "impostering" as good mothers....