Factitious disorders are a group of mental disturbances in which patients intentionally act physically or mentally ill without obvious benefits. The name factitious comes from a Latin word that means artificial. These disorders are not malingering, which is defined as pretending illness when the "patient" has a clear motive, such as financial gain. Patients with factitious disorders produce or exaggerate the symptoms of a physical or mental illness by contaminating urine samples with blood, taking hallucinogens, injecting themselves with bacteria to produce infections, and other similar behaviors. There are no reliable statistics on the frequency of factitious disorders, but they are more common in men than in women. Several conditions are sometimes classified as factitious disorders: Munchausen syndrome, Munchausen by proxy, and Ganser's syndrome. In Munchausen syndrome, which starts in early adulthood, patients dramatize and exaggerate their factitious symptoms. Many go so far as to undergo...