Most of us in our lives have committed the act of "pretending." As children we simply didn't want to go to school for fear of being picked on or maybe we didn't want to take that grueling math test. We made up every excuse not to go to school by faking an illness. As an adult, you wanted to go away to secure a three-day weekend, making it up and telling your boss that you felt feverish. Unfortunately, in our society, there have even been some selfish people who fake an illness, such as breast cancer, earning money from the funding that sympathetic people have allocated to further their personal obligations. Malingering must be understood to understand the difference between it and a more concerning disorder: factitious disorder. Malingering, which is not considered a psychological disorder, is commonly identified and defined as sufferers who want to gain something financially from the result of faking an illness. Factitious Disorder is often misdiagnosed and overlooked, is defined as the intentional act of misrepresenting an illness, and has no obvious benefit other than having an internal need to just call attention to oneself and gain emotional sympathy. There are several subdivisions of Factitious Disorder. They include psychological factitious disorder (PsyFD), physical factitious disorder (PhyFD), combined psychological and physical factitious disorder (ComboFD), Munchausen syndrome, and Ganser syndrome. The person who claims to have an illness generally desires empathy and will go to great lengths to embellish the symptoms of an illness or disease in many different ways. In factitious psychological disorder (PsyFD), the individual will mentally and emotionally assume that they are suffering from a mind. ..... middle of paper ...... under detection radar. It can ruin the credibility of someone who actually gets sick one day, as in the fairytale story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. I hope more cases will be studied and documented for the future of society. Factitious ailments waste time and money that are needed by those who are ill, not those who get excited by the gestures of sympathy they receive. Works Cited Hamilton, James C. and Holly N. Deemer. “Excessive reassurance seeking as self-regulated perseveration: Implications for explaining the relationship between depression and illness behavior” Psychological Inquiry Vol. 10, no. 4 (1999): 293-297 JSTOR Web. November 12, 2013. Samaan, Zainab, Erin Hoh, and Glenda MacQueen. “Fictitious disorder presenting as type 1 diabetes mellitus” Case Reports BMJ (2009). ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3027606/Web. November 12. 2013.