Virtual Munchausen

Everyone knows there are some Sick folks out there on the web. But some chat-room regulars are taking sick to a whole new level, feigning illness to gain sympathy, attention, and even admiration from scores of internet support-group members who have no idea they're being duped. Welcome to the world of "virtual factitious disorders."

There are some ways to spot duplicity ity, says psychiatrist Marc Feldman '80,DMS '84, one of a mere handful of experts on factitious disorders such as Munchausen syndrome, in which healthy people chronically mimic illness, and the more disturbing Munchausen-by-proxy syndrome, in which "caregivers" deliberately make health)- dependents (often children) ill. Suspect virtual factitious disorder, says Feldman, if someone in a chat room always tries to top everyone else's complaints, if a "patient" keeps getting the facts wrong, or if information sounds like it was lifted from a textbook. Consistent grammatical and spelling errors can be tips that a person is signing onto different e-mail accounts to stage medical arguments. And if a person claims to be in the intensive care unit yet continues to post messages, factitious disorder is a likely diagnosis. "When confronted, the person quits subscribing—but may show up elsewhere," says Feldman.

Want to know more? Read Feldman's Patient or Pretender: Inside the StrangeWorld Disorders "(John Wiley & Sons, 1994) or his new book, Strangerthan Fiction: When Our Minds Betray Us (American Psychiatric Press, 1998). Or click on . But be warned: interest in virtual factitious disorders is contagious. Feldman who is based at the University of Alabama, says that after being listed in a New York Times article about faking illness on the internet, his website got "massive hits." Lastcount: more than 38,400.

Feldman is hard to fool