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Have you ever come across someone with Munchausen syndrome?

Munchausen is a mental illness where a person fakes being sick (often terminally ill) for the attention they receive from doctors and others. They may even deliberately poison themselves to make it appear more real. Munchausen-by-proxy is an especially disturbing version of the illness where a person makes someone else (often a child) sick for the attention.

A couple years ago I was on another site and interacted with this man who was apparently dying of cancer; he chronicled all his surgeries and his story was very detailed, emotional, and moving, and a lot of people were deeply into it. In the end it turned out he had faked the entire thing.
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Picklebobble2 · 56-60, M
I've come across it twice in my working life as a social worker.

I think it's human nature to [i]want[/i] to help people who [i]appear[/i] to be in trouble.
And when you read endless reports from 'Professionals' who supposedly know about this stuff but don't take the possibility into account when making their 'diagnosis' of their patient/clients 'condition' it is very worrying.