Quote:
Originally Posted by Gr3tta
Re: faking it- especially among young people, by this i mean teenagers and people in their twenties, but it can happen among people of ALL ages, i have observed that it has become more and more acceptable, even trendy among some, to display some types of mental iillness symptoms such as self harm and talking about eating disorders. As this acceptance occurs, in order for someone to get attention for mental health symptoms which are less than genuine through shock value, they have to up the ante. This can include faking - or claiming- things such as hearing voices, hallucinating, having paranoid thoughts, etc when they are not really experiencing these things. This attention seeking behavior can then cause doctors to question people with legitimate symptoms. This to me is really sad. It threatens the care of people who really need help, and trivializes their suffering.
*Note- I'm sure there is no way to avoid someone taking offence to this, but i wanted to say it anyway because i DO see it happen. This post is in no way directed at any member here.
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Ok, yeah I have seen this happen, actually. Especially with teenagers who claim to have every diagnosis/trauma under the sun. This isn't limited to psychosis, either. I met a girl who claimed to dissociate, but she only did it when it was most convenient and didn't seem bothered by it. Like, if you aren't the least bit concerned about your mental illness, you announce it to everyone or try to one-up people, and there's a history of a lot of non-psychotic self harm then I would say those are red flags...
I saw this in the eating disorder unit I was on, too... people would come in for non-ED reasons because the general adolescent unit was full, and suddenly they would start displaying ED behaviors... and would constantly try to "prove" how sick they were by making extreme claims about exercise, weight loss, and fasting that weren't backed up by their actual behavior. Like I met a girl who would constantly talk about having a terrible eating disorder, yet ate normally without any apparent discomfort... then she made up BS excuses for her contradictory story... It was frustrating to say the least.