Brainaction

In this blog the Resource entitled Simulation of Illness addresses the most common hazard to diagnosis, the faking of complaint. In hysteria and malingering the simulation of complaints give the false impression of illness. A succesful fake brings gain. The malingerer fakes...

Long after Ivan Illich (1977) denounced professional expansionism it continues unchecked. Governments struggle to contain the prohibitive cost of health services, but do nothing about its most blatant waste, the recurrent epidemics of pseudo-illness. Illich invented the term iatrogenesis, doctor-generated complaint....

The natural concern of doctors for those who suffer has its downside. When they cannot distinguish fake from fact or self-defeating from resolvable conduct, empathy governs their reason. Objective criteria should guide diagnosis. Doctors (and judges for that matter) distinguish...