Patient or Pretender: Inside the Strange World of Factitious Disorders

According to psychiatrists Feldman and Ford, most of the patients featured in this engrossing collection about feigned illnesses shared a desperate need for attention, sympathy and drama. Recent research suggets they are subject to a brain dysfunction (``factitious disorder'') that requires psychiatric care. The authors' medical mystery stories range from simulated breast cancer to near fatal faking of anemia by self-bloodletting. Other patients invent stomach disorders, bulimia, fevers, seizures, blindness, or insantiy, with some purposeful patients deliberately ingesting rat poison or drugs. Most cruel of all deceptions is a form of Munchausen syndrome in which a parent fakes the illness of a child. In a book of more interest to professionals, the authors recommend special training for practitioners who hope to treat these ``real, not false patients'' despite their calculated deceits. Author tour. (Nov.)