Fake depression(What is it)
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The Optimistminds editorial team is made up of psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health professionals. Each article is written by a team member with exposure to and experience in the subject matter. The article then gets reviewed by a more senior editorial member. This is someone with extensive knowledge of the subject matter and highly cited published material.
Fake depression: A guide to understanding the reasons why a person can fake depression.
In this guide, we are going to discuss the reasons why a person decides to fake a depression and how the person can understand the seriousness of this mental illness.
Fake depression
One of the most prevalent mental illnesses in the human population is depression.
The World Health Organization (WHO) states that by 2020 depression will be the leading cause of disability worldwide, something that has to be a cause for alertness and create greater awareness campaigns on the importance of identifying depression, its treatments and the consequences if it is not diagnosed.
Many people throughout their life experienced or will experience depression.
The causes for which depression can develop are multifactorial, that is, there is no single cause.
Depression is a serious mental illness, and like all illness it needs treatment.
A person who has depression shows symptoms of sadness and hopelessness, which last most of the day.
The person feels negative and sees their future darkly. It feels without any hope.
You may have been around someone suffering from depression and these symptoms may seem similar.
The person who has depression does not want to see itself in that state, but it is hard for the person, it often refuses help since it sees it as useless and prefers not to do so.
It is unfortunate when a person learns of someone suffering from depression, but more unfortunate is when there are people who claim to have depression, that is, a fake depression.
It may be something that surprises many people when they hear it for the first time and you might be one of those, but some people say they have depression, but they don’t have it.
You might think: Why does a person have fake depression?
Well, many reasons lead a person to pretend it has depression, that is, a fake depression.
A person has several reasons why it develops a fake depression, one of them is to attract attention.
Some people need to be the centre of attention, they feel good when the eyes of others are on them and they feel that everyone cares about their well-being.
The person when it sees that someone cares about how it feels, it generates a sense of well-being and feels that it has accomplished its task.
Another reason why a person has a fake depression is to obtain certain benefits.
When the person pretends to have depression, he sees the anguish in which the people around him are submerged and they know that they are willing to do what they ask to see their improvement.
The person with fake depression takes this opportunity to take advantage of and ask for things that will “contribute” to their improvement.
When the person with fake depression sees that it is not getting what it wants, it tends to exaggerate the symptoms and come to believe that it will do certain actions to get what he wants.
It can say that it is going to commit self-destruction to take its relatives and friends to the extreme.
It is common to see some people with fake depression make their social network profiles public as they feel.
It is a way to get attention and see that others are on the lookout.
It is common to publish things like: “I want to die”, “I want to take my life” and similar phrases so that the eyes of others are on his person.
The person with fake depression does not understand the seriousness of their actions and does not understand the suffering that people around them go through.
These actions that it performs in many cases can be reasons for a previous mental illness that the person has and is not aware of.
There are also situations where the person feels sad and maybe going through a bad time and tends to exaggerate the symptoms, coming to think that it has depression.
The person can take the state of believing that it has depression and can be involved in all the symptoms that the disease itself presents.
Sometimes some people can tell someone that they have depression and they can even believe it.
On the contrary, many people don’t show their feelings or depression to others, hiding their mental state.
These people are said to be suffering from concealed depression.
What is depression?
Depression is a mental illness that is characterized by feelings of sadness and melancholy.
It is normal for people at some point in their life to feel sad or hopeless, but for a short time.
But when the feeling of sadness, together with feeling desolate, abandoned and negative to live prevails most of the day for a long period we are talking about depression.
A person with depression has a negative perspective on life. Everything looks dark and in some cases, it thinks it has no reason to live.
Try in many cases to hide how it feels.
The depressive person sees a black cloud in its life, nothing makes sense and believes that it will not be able to leave its state.
Not only the person who has depression suffers from this mental illness but also the people around.
It is difficult for family members, friends or a couple to have, see how the person suffers from the symptoms of depression.
In many cases, they try to help, but sometimes there is little they can do since the person with depression would like help, but in turn, it has little expectation that it will work.
Symptoms of depression
Depression, like any mental illness, manifests symptoms in different ways in each person, but some are usually predominant.
Some of them are:
- Feeling sad and hopeless most of the day
- Difficulty sleeping or doing too much
- Tiredness and lack of energy
- Feelings of worthlessness and guilt
- Changes in appetite. Sometimes the person tends to gain or lose weight
- Difficult to focus
- Loss of interest in activities that you previously performed and that caused you pleasure
- Feelings of abandonment
- Recurring thoughts about self-destruction and in several cases attempts
How to help a person with fake depression?
To help a person with fake depression, it is important to identify if the symptoms presented are depression that is suffering or is lying.
For a person to know if another person is pretending to have depression, the diagnosis of a mental health professional is key.
It is important to make the person with depression aware that they should receive help to overcome the disease and a way of knowing if they have fake depression or not.
Some characteristics presented by a person with fake depression is that their moods are usually variants.
Sometimes they often exaggerate their depression symptoms and give unconscious descriptions.
Sometimes depression arises in case of specific eventualities, for example, the person is going through a situation from which one wants to get rid of and pretend that it has depression makes the situation go in its favour.
Also, the person pretends to have depression to get medications that can be given under a prescription.
When someone has security about a person with fake depression, it is important to raise awareness about the seriousness of the disease itself and the importance of not using it to get certain benefits from the law that the person knows he does not deserve.
When confronting the person with fake depression, the right thing to do is to do it in a way where they do not feel bad because, although the person indeed did wrong by faking the depression, it should not be subject to criticism and ill-treatment either.
It is important to be empathetic, to show the person their mistake and how important it is not to pretend to have mental illnesses such as depression, these are very serious and should not be taken to manipulate others.
When the person pretends depression in many cases it does it to get attention, it is important that, although the person does not have depression, it is possible that the person has other discomforts and here it is important to have the opinion of a person in the field of mental health so that the professional not only rule out depression but other possible diseases.
FAQs about fake depression
What are the reasons why a person pretends to have depression?
A person who pretends to have depression has several reasons for doing so.
Some of these relate to wanting to get the attention of the people around you.
Other reasons are related to making situations turn in their favour and obtain certain medical benefits.
Is it right to attack a person who is faking depression?
While it is true that pretending to have depression is not correct, it is also not right to attack a person.
It is important to express that it is not right to fake depression, but the person should be told calmly and consciously.
What are the causes of why a person may have depression?
The factors that lead a person to develop depression are diverse.
There are the genetic aspects, where there are people who from their birth may be more vulnerable to developing depression; and there are environmental factors, where a person who has had a mother or father or has been in an environment around a depressive person, can develop it.
Also, a traumatic experience can lead to a person developing depression.
What treatment can a person with depression receive?
Among the most commonly used treatments are drug therapy and psychological therapy.
In pharmacological therapy, the use of antidepressants is located and among the psychological therapies is cognitive behavioural therapy.
Does a person pretend to have depression need psychological help?
The mental health professional, after having made its diagnosis and having discovered that the person is faking depression, the professional will investigate the reasons why the person faked the depression and from there it will decide if it needs any type of treatment or not.
Conclusion
Depression is a serious mental illness that in most cases needs to be operated by a mental health professional.
The person suffering from depression suffers from the disease as do the people around him.
A person who is pretending to have depression does not think that this could have consequences if it is discovered that the reasons for doing so are to obtain some benefit from the law that he knows he does not deserve.
The person who pretends to have depression also has reasons that relate to wanting to get attention and knows that mental illnesses with it tend to make people worry about those who suffer from it.
Depression should not be taken lightly and should not be a reason for a person to pretend to have fake depression.
It is important to raise awareness about this disease and the consequences it brings.
Recommended links
- Patient of Pretender: Inside the Strange World of Factitious Disorders
- Dying to be Ill: True Stories of Medical Deception
Recommended videos
- The Woman Who Faked Depression to Get a Free Nose Job on the NHS
- How To Tell if Someone is FAKING A Mental Illness
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