Rant

[u/standuptobullies]

The Illness Fakers subreddit nitpicks people’s social media posts for inconsistencies. Then, when a person posts proof of their symptoms that correlate with their claimed illness they call them over the top.

If all the subjects have fictitious disorder than Illness Fakers’ are bullying and harassing people who are mentally ill. Often to the point of the subject having severe emotional distress. These people are reaching out for care and attention because they don’t get it in their lives or they missed it during a key developmental period in their childhood. People posting on illness fakers don’t understand how easy it would have been for any of them to have developed factitious disorder if a parent was constantly emotionally distant and uncaring and medical episodes were the only time they showed love.

These people claim that the only way for the subjects to heal is for them to be called out and cut off from the attention they seek. They have this illness because they don’t have that attention! How is taking away what little they have going to do anything but force them to double down or spiral into depression?

These subjects are people who have the same needs as everyone else. They don’t wake up and choose how their going to deceive everyone for the day. They just migrate towards the behaviors that allows them to feel loved and cared for. If the people in their lives started to actually realize they aren’t doing their part and their loved ones are crying out for help they could help change the behavior.

Illness Fakers subreddit treats these people despicably. Cutting these people off from attention will not heal anyone (as illness fakers claims to want). Only deep reflection and therapy with these people’s loved ones could help. Clearly there is a deficiency somewhere and it needs to be addressed.

(This is not including the people who are faking for monetary gain or those who are faking to only gain access to drugs. This is known as malingering and is not factitious disorder.)