There is an unspoken contract between health care providers and those who seek their care that symptoms will be reported honestly and signs will not be altered to exaggerate or conceal a disease. When this is not the case, money is wasted in unnecessary testing and the provider's time is wasted when it could be used to treat genuinely sick people. But there is another waste; valuable energy the person spends feigning illness or injury. Symptom magnification can also be caused by depression or by viewing every ache and pain as dangerous, a process called catastrophizing, which begins in childhood.
Malingering
Malingering is the faking of signs or symptoms of illness or injury for the purpose of securing financial compensation, a prescription for narcotics or other mind-altering medications, or permission to stop working . This can also occur when someone is trying to avoid legal action, examinations at school, or the departure of a person from his life. Malingering is a conscious process, under the control of the individual.
Faceticious Disorder
Facetious disorder is diagnosed when someone intentionally fabricates symptoms for the sake of creating the victim or sick-person role. Borderline Personality Disorder was found in 58 percent of people with facetious disorder in a study by Dr.Randy Sansone, published in the January 2008 issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychology. People with facetious disorder falsely report symptoms, such as pain and paralysis, but in one subcategory of the disorder, Munchhausen Syndrome, the person goes further and physically creates false signs of disease.
Depression
Depression can intensify the experience of pain, according to British researchers writing in the 2005 issue of Clinical Medicine. They found that clients with high scores on tests for depression rate pain intensity higher and perceive their pain as disabling longer than those without depression.
Catastrophizing
Dr. Cornelius Katona and his colleagues at the University of Kent describe a pattern behavior that begins in childhood and can lead to a lifetime of chronic pain, catastophizing. In childhood the catastrophizer learns to treat all threats, including illness, emotions and external happenings as being very threatening and dangerous. This pattern damages the developing brain, increasing activity in the brain where danger is evaluated.
MRIs of patients with fibromyalgia were found to have a catastophisizing pattern, which leads those suffering from this disease to genuinely experience pain in many regions of the body without any damage to tissues, according to the findings of a study at the University of Michigan, reported in the April 2004 issue of the journal Brain.
Parents can try to avoid the development of this pattern by watching that their own reactions to a child's illness or injury are not overly dramatic. Positive, optomistic parenting helps make children resilient to many life circumstances, according to Robert Brookes, Ph.D. author of the book,
"Raising Resilient Children."
References
- "Journal of Clinical Psychology"; The Relationship Between Borderline Personality Symptomatology and Somatic Preoccupation Among Internal Medicine Outpatients; Randy Sansone, M.D. et al ; Jan 2008
- "Clinical Medicine"; Pain Symptoms in Depression; Cornelius Katonia et al; August 2005
- "Brain"; Pain catastrophizing and neural responses to Pain Among Persons with Fibromyalgia; R.H. Gracely, M.D.. et al; April 2004;
