CASE REPORT article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Psychological Therapy and Psychosomatics
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1649205
Case Report: Area of Focus-Involuntary Admission for Severe Factitious Disorder Imposed on Self
Provisionally accepted
- National University Hospital, Singapore, Singapore
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Factitious Disorder is clinically challenging to diagnose owing to its reliance on unequivocal evidence of deception. The nature of the disorder and lack of definitive treatment may limit utilization of mental health legislation, despite its potential fatality. Here, we report a case of a young lady with recurrent, unexplained and life-threatening episodes of iron-deficiency anaemia. Lack of reliable informant to clarify suspicion of Factitious Disorder as well as overshadowing of legal and ethical dilemmas further complicate the clinical management. An involuntary admission, as a last resort, had assisted to solidify the diagnosis of factitious disorder and enforced necessary therapeutic interventions. This Case Report is the first report to highlight the exceptional use of involuntary admission involving a patient with lifethreatening factitious anaemia, in Singapore context. It sets the precedence for the exceptional application of the MHCTA outside of gazetted institutions in Singapore, in context of probable severe factitious anaemia.
Keywords: Factitious Disorder Imposed on Self, Munchausen's syndrome, Involuntary admission, civil commitment, case report
Received: 18 Jun 2025; Accepted: 18 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Eng, Neo and Chang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Sim Leng Eng, National University Hospital, Singapore, Singapore
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