Research Can Ptsd Be Faked Or Not By A Person?

[lostforgottensoul]

Faking "being crazy" is not the same as faking PTSD.

You can fake anything if you know enough about that thing.

Given that he'd have to simultaneously fake hypervigilance, depression, anxiety, triggers and keep all of it going simultaneously

All PTSD actual sufferers have many different symptoms and many more combinations of symptoms together.

PTSD is about as hard to fake any any other disorder and just as easy if you are heavily read up on it and heavily understand each symptom.

My step mom's brother was wicked smart. I do believe PTSD was the "crazy" he was faking. I may be mistaken and can't ask as he's dead now. But he would have learned all he could about it before attempting to fake it.

 

[J'qel]

If he got it more than twenty years ago, it's highly unlikely. Awareness and disability benefits for PTSD are fairly recent.

Crippling PTSD is pretty hard to fake. It includes a number of issues, including some that are mental illnesses all on their own. It's much easier to fake a single illness than it is to fake a series of them (why PTSD took so long to identify and why it's so hard to treat).

Also-the easiest and quickest way to identify a fake? They're *exactly* textbook.

No mental illness is textbook. Not one. Partially for that specific reason (people who "fake").

I might suggest your step mother's brother may well have *been* mentally ill.... just not in the way he thought he was pretending to be. Depending on the severity and the jobs he was in, it may have been safer for others if he was no longer in the work force.

 

[FauxLiz]

I don't know about anyone else but I am certain I am faking everyday I leave the house but I am not faking PTSD, My goal is actually the opposite is concentrate and work diligently to fake some semblance of normal. My T and I have discussed this at length because I refuse to allow anyone to know my dirty secret. I refuse to allow my T to use PTSD in anything but his personal notes, I want not trace of it in my medical records. I am ashamed and embarrased of my past and as such refuse to allow my T to communicate with any of my other medical professionals.

 

[J'qel]

This is why when anyone mentions "faking" it I try to point out how very difficult that would be. Too many people with PTSD fear that they *are* faking it because of the anxiety+depression component.

No. If someone is going to fake a disability, PTSD would not be the one. It's far too complex and crippling.

You are *not* faking it. If you were, your T would know.

 

[eloc]

I totally get this. About 6 months after I was diagnosed I "confessed" to my therapist that I was faking...

I had denial for about 6 weeks of therapy and just kept saying I was just burnt out - but then my T suggested that it was my personality that might stop me from getting better - well my guts blew up like an over inflated balloon and would not go down at all till my next session - we managed to work on that and get that bodily symptom to go away but it turned into an arm that did not feel like my own and I stopped using it for a week and then we worked on that and I ended up in the hospital with chest pains querying heart attack - at that point I surrendered to the diagnosis and then started two years of therapy and then the insurance cut out and tried to downplay my PTSD as recovered - when getting to a better place is all about acceptance of life being altered I just had to walk away from trying to get continued support - one things for sure you cn't fake the poverty that comes from knowing that returning to the same stressful work environement that made you sick is a bad idea. I have read also that PTSD develops on your lifetime of trauma and that there may be one event that is the straw that breaks the camels back but all the little things along the way before add into that.

 

[Gs172003]

I don't know about anyone else but I am certain I am faking everyday I leave the house but I am not fak...

Agreed. I feel like a damn fake just saying it.