Faking mental illness
Ok, I’m sure you’ve all heard it before from someone over the age of 50, but there are a lot more people with mental illness now than there ever have been, so what’s the deal? Are there more causes for mental illness? Are the criteria too lax? Are they faking it? Or are we just more attuned to mental difficulties now and are able to label them correctly? Everyone knows it’s the last one, right? Like, obviously. Unless…
What if people are faking it? I mean, definitely not everyone. In fact, probably less than 1%. Probably like 0.01%, I don’t know. It’s really hard to study, because why would someone who is faking having a mental illness admit that they are faking it. So we are left with those on the outside — psychologists, theorists, random citizens — assessing those on the inside.
If someone is faking a mental illness for attention or medication or whatever, wouldn’t that be in itself a mental illness? Yes! I have talked in a previous blog about Munchausen-by-proxy, but when it is related to the self and not a child, it is just called Munchausen syndrome. Munchausen can be related to a physical illness or a psychological one. Munchausen is incredibly hard to diagnose and treat, precisely because the patients are not truthful.
There are some mental illnesses that many psychologists do not even believe in. Among them is Dissociative Identity Disorder, which used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder. It has been estimated that about 20% of psychologists do not believe in this disorder, and those who do believe in it are often skeptical of specific cases. Some believe that this disorder can actually be caused by psychology, in that a psych convinces their patient that they suffer from it, intentionally or not. Personally, I know the brain is a crazy organ and pretty much anything can happen in there, so I’m sure there are people with multiple personalities, but perhaps not to the extent that they are represented in youtube vlogs and horror movies.
Another mental/psychical illness that many did not believe was real is chronic fatigue syndrome. This is categorized by extreme fatigue, but can also include things like pain and sleep abnormalities. Despite having no apparent physical cause, CFS is now regarded as real and is recognized by psychologists and other types of doctors. Where they draw the line between being sleepy and having a syndrome, I don’t know. This disease was mostly experienced by those in the middle class, and was often referred to as “yuppie flu”. It was dismissed by researchers as mass hysteria for not having any cause they could find, and because it mostly affected women. Women’s relationship with the healthcare system believing them and labeling them as hysterical is complicated, so this in itself does not seem enough to disprove it for me.
There is also the case of “faking a mental illness for internet clout”, which seems to be a popular belief nowadays, although I feel that oftentimes these discussions just lead to greater stigma towards people with actual mental health problems, and do little to “weed out” the fakers.
My assignment for anyone reading this is to go watch the movie Safe (1995) starring Julianne Moore. It’s about a woman who becomes convinced she is allergic to everything. It was definitely on my list of Covid/quarantine movies (The Seventh Seal, The Shining), and I think it is a very interesting character study.
