It is difficult to say how common factitious disorders are. A review of psychiatric consultations in a tertiary care setting found about 1% of referrals received a diagnosis of factitious disorder. Using an entirely different approach, researchers examined specimens submitted by patients as kidney stones and found that 3.5% were obviously non-physiological.

But whatever the prevalence, the consequences can be serious. They include unnecessary diagnostic procedures or interventions and sometimes self-injury.

To find out more about this condition, please do listen to this BMJ Best Practice podcast interview with James Levenson, Professor of Psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University. And importantly James is author of our BMJ Best Practice topic on factitious disorders. Competing interests: None

For more on factitious disorders, visit BMJ Best Practice.

Dr. Michael Mina of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health