Comorbidity between factitious disorder and borderline personality disorder: assessment in medical and psychiatric care

Abstract

During recent years, there has been a new rise of cases of factitious disorder, mainly linked to comorbidity with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Patients with FD-BPD are of interest and concern for general practitioners, hospital physicians and psychiatrists. Our research is a phenomenological approach for an explanation of this presentation which shows a growing trend. Physical symptoms and factitious medical and psychiatric symptoms can be used by patients with FD and BPD to exercise extra pressure on medical and nursing staff for accessing additional healthcare services, and medical and surgical procedures otherwise not available for minor pathologies. However, the risk is that these patients’ elaborated physical and mental symptoms can mislead medical and psychiatric teams to the risk of poly pharmacy, iatrogenic side effects, unnecessary medical and surgical investigations and treatments. The current study develops as a phenomenological approach and assessment tool of FD-BPD in medical and psychiatric care.