What Is a "Fake Illness" and Can Doctors Spot Them?

A deep dive into the complex intersection between chronic physical illness, somatization, factitious disorder, and malingering. The discussion includes Munchausen by Internet (MBI) and Mass Social Media Induced Illness (MSMI). Strong Medicine video on Robin Niceta (an extreme case of malingering):    • A woman faked a brain tumor. Reddit docs a...   Selected References (sorry, some of these are behind paywalls): Original post by reddit user Anonymous1011: https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/com... DSM5 Criteria for Somatic Symptom and Related Disorders: https://www.workingfit.co.uk/medical-... Paper on TikToc tics: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35303... Original paper on Munchausen by Internet: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10923... Paper on Mass Social Media Induced Illness and Munchausen by Internet: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35473... Paper on the role of TikTok in encourage a "sick-role subculture": https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34534... Paper on the contagion-like spread of psychiatric illness via adolescent peer networks: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38776... Paper on the spread of dissociative identity disorder on social media: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37271... Paper on the association between number of medication allergies and risk of psychiatric illness: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science... The Illness Fakers subreddit (of which I'm not personally a fan, but it is an important component of the online landscape of this topic):   / illnessfakers   UpToDate articles on Somatic Symptom Disorder, Illness Anxiety Disorder, Functional Neurologic Disoder, and Factitious Disorder Imposed on Self (a.k.a. Munchausen syndrome)