Talk:Malingering of post-traumatic stress disorder

Merge
This entire article should get merged into Posttraumatic stress disorder. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Doczilla (talk • contribs)


 * As long as it doesn't make it too long, we should add an "Assessment of PTSD" section to the PTSD article, with a subsection discussing malingering. Although I would propose that, at least in the disability benefits area, malingering (a conscious, intentional effort to feign PTSD in order to achieve a desired result, e.g., compensation benefits, sentence reduction, lawsuit settlement, etc.) is not the biggest cause of false positive PTSD diagnoses. I suspect that the most frequent causes are:


 * Evaluee Specific:
 * > significant exaggeration (without clear evidence of conscious intention to feign a mental disorder);
 * > mistaken attribution - assuming that genuine depression, anxiety, irritability, sleep problems, etc., are due to a traumatic event (or an event which the person perceives as being traumatic), and therefore assuming that he or she suffers from PTSD when, in fact, the person suffers from a depressive disorder or anxiety disorder or a combination of mental disorders, but not PTSD. Most of these cases of misattribution occur innocently, i.e., the individual genuinely believes that they have PTSD;
 * > incorrect referrals - encouraged, prodded, and cajoled into filing for disability benefits because they served in a combat zone, when they do not, in fact, have PTSD;


 * Evaluator Specific:
 * > Evaluators (primarily psychologists and psychiatrists) who do not take the time to seek the education, training, supervision, and/or consultation necessary to conduct an evidence-based, multi-method, reliable and valid assessment of reported PTSD and they subsequently conduct inadequate, unreliable, and inaccurate evaluations, which often produce false positive (and false negative) results.
 * > Similarly, evaluators who have not sought the education, training, supervision, and/or consultation necessary to conduct competent forensic mental health evaluations in general and in the specific area of forensic psychological or psychiatric practice (e.g., criminal, disability, personal injury, etc.)
 * > Evaluators who abandon the ethical principles of their profession and become biased advocates for claimants, often out of misplaced sympathy and/or a belief that they have an obligation to personally 'repay' veterans for their sacrifices and/or because it becomes a good source of referrals, e.g., every city has a mental health professional who evaluates veterans and almost always concludes that the vet has "severe, chronic PTSD" that "causes permanent and total disability."


 * Institutional:
 * Organizations establish laws or regulations that interfere with professional practice and increase the false positive rate, e.g., the Social Security Administration and the U.S. Army Medical Command both prohibit the assessment of potential dissimulation in disability compensation claims for PTSD (and other mental disorders).  Mark D Worthen PsyD  04:25, 25 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I generally agree with you. This article seems to have been written with a non-neutral point of view and a potential political agenda. Vontheri (talk) 18:27, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

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