She suddenly got psychosis after i told her about mine. She said the exact same things i said in group (she even copied exactly what my voices say). It aggravates me because she would out of no where say i’m having a “schizophrenic moment”.
It really irritated me and when i would experience confusion she would also act like she was confused. The even worst part is the fact that no doctor dx her and she openly self diagnosed in the 2 days she was there. It was a huge insult to me.
I was in a hospital mental ward and there was a girl who was acting. I didn’t say anything and I should have, I had a duty. I think she romanticized mental illness, after all we are interesting folks. She will change her mind once the medicine side effects kick in.
I don’t hold them in contempt. I’ve heard stories of people who wanted to fake a mental illness that ended up developing one in the process. Malingering isn’t mere acting, it’s method acting and you do end up creating unhealthy mental patterns in the process.
I feel for these people. You don’t malinger, nor do you believe you have mental illnesses you don’t have, if you are internally at peace, feel at ease with your life and consider yourself a valued member of a community.
These are people on the fringes of society like us who never quite found their place in this world. Some may do it with malice in their hearts, thinking that they are degrading themselves to get what they want, but most I believe are just looking for a reason for the unease in their lives and end up trying to fit into whichever mold they come across that gives them the illusion of being part of an in-group.
Personally I fall prey to this as well. For example there have been periods where my anxiety has gone out of control and my relatively minor derealization/depersonalization tendencies tied to schizophrenia got magnified to the point that I considered how realistic a diagnosis on the dissociation spectrum would be for me.
Truth of the matter is that mental illness is very hard to grasp at all levels because its understanding is hindered unlike anything else by communicability. People don’t understand what a mental illness is until they have it, and that includes specialists in the field, but they do understand the words used to describe the characteristics typical of a condition and those same words perhaps aren’t much of a stretch for them to identify with.
People have in the past made the jump from noticing that their emotions promote in them different judgements and opinions to thinking they have multiple personalities. People have even associated their inner thoughts with hearing voices, perhaps due to the structure of their inner monologue. We need to show patience and understanding to these people because although they may not share our struggles they are often in distress and, what’s perhaps worse, in a downward spiral they are trying to stop by reaching for the bottom, because in a very weird way if you are already at the bottom, i.e. schizophrenia, DID, major depression, etc. you have nowhere else to fall to.
Yes. I’ve noticed people who copycat. They think it’s going to be a great life. I think their problem must have actually been a developmental disability, if that’s what it’s called.
In psychology, this is called a social contagion. She wants to “fit in.” You see a lot of this with criminals who fake mental illness to get sent to a mental hospital instead of a prison.
People who do this have to careful because they may fake mental illness “too well.” It’s one thing to convince a psychiatrist that you’re mentally ill, but after you do that it’s more difficult to convince a psychiatrist that you’re not mentally ill.
I’m literally too ill to be admitted to the hospital lol. They turn me away everytime. Last time I was in there was horrible. Only in there 7 days and glad I got out when I did, felt like I was gonna die another day in there.
Also almost got into a fight second day in, some dude just came at me. He ended up beating someone else up the next day.
people do this to me all the time, its irritating. my recent ex did it consistently throughout our relationship and it drove me nuts. it sucks that people have to put down other mentally ill people to feel validated in their own experiences. the worst part of this disorder (other than living with it) is having to deal with people seeing you as the amount of mental illness they should strive to present as.
Idk about here, it’s hard to tell because it’s online. I’m not really into second-guessing everyone here – i take it on good faith that people are experiencing what they say. People might actually be experiencing stuff and unsure and just wanting to talk about it with others. Then again I havent seen everything on this site.
For fakers, I feel pretty sure these people can’t last in the system.
Even for people actually experiencing psychosis, the case manager for the youth mental health service that I’m seeing (not a huge fan of this service though) says that it’s common for people to get misdiagnosed.
For me, my psychologist has recordings of our sessions & there’s often been multiple times where i was speaking total word salad, etc, and the youth mental health service saw this. And i did dumb things because i thought the govt was spying on me before i came across any site or sought help or read any symptoms of psychosis.
But going through a lot of different teams and people in the service, sometimes one would say psychosis and then another wouldn’t, because they didn’t see what someone else in the other team saw. But in the end they said it was psychosis. That was such a nightmare to keep trying to navigate, just to get meds that i need, and i was suffering before meds.
I don’t think a faker would keep trying to bother.
Doctors also usually ask family and friends to confirm psychosis. They asked one of my teachers a lot of questions to confirm. I was definitely behaving erratically for months.
