Malingering
Last reviewed Saturday, October 24, 2026Malingering means deliberately faking or exaggerating physical or psychological symptoms to get an outside reward, such as money, time off work or a lighter outcome in a court case. It isn’t a mental illness. It’s thought to be rare in everyday health care, more common where compensation or a legal case is at stake, and hard to prove.
Also called: feigning; symptom exaggeration. Exaggerating real symptoms (“partial” malingering) is thought to be more common than inventing them (“pure” malingering).
Signs
The DSM-5 diagnostic manual lists signs that should raise suspicion:
- a legal or compensation setting, such as an injury claim
- a big gap between the symptoms described and what tests or records show
- not cooperating with assessment or treatment
- rare, improbable or contradictory symptoms
- antisocial personality disorder
None of these proves anything. Experts criticise the list as vague: a court case or a personality disorder doesn’t make someone a faker. Real illness and exaggeration often exist together.
How it’s assessed
There’s no single test. A psychiatrist or psychologist compares reported symptoms with interviews, records and what they observe. Psychological assessments include validity tests that check whether answers are consistent and plausible. Reviews warn that these tests, like clinical judgement, aren’t enough on their own.
Malingering vs factitious disorder and somatic symptoms
In factitious disorder, once called Munchausen syndrome, people also fake or cause illness on purpose, but without an obvious outside reward; the drive is to be seen as ill and cared for. In somatic symptom disorder, the symptoms are real and not produced on purpose. So “no medical cause found” never means “faking”.
In Nigeria
Nigerian research on malingering is thin, mostly case reports. One, from Zaria, described a young woman who faked a pregnancy after abuse over her infertility: faking can still come from real distress. Here, distress often shows as body symptoms such as heat in the body, which WHO notes in some cultures. They are real symptoms.
When to get help
If you’re told you’re “pretending” but your symptoms are real, see a doctor and mention your mood too. A licensed therapist on Mytherapist.ng who works with sleep and somatic symptoms can help. If pressure at work or at home is pushing you to exaggerate, a therapist can help with that too.
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This entry is awaiting clinical review. It’s based on published research and health guidelines, and we’ll update it once a clinician has reviewed it.
