It’s disappointing that this sub is so inactive because I’ve seen so much people irl and online who fake or exaggerate their mental illness yet aren’t allowed to be criticized due to a host of excuses and enabling by others. This deserves to be called out more as its only gotten worse. One excuse I hear often from people when confronted with the possibility that someone is faking their illness or diagnosis: “who cares anyways, how does that affect you”. I mean for one, fakers can and do increase stigma or devalue the real suffering of people that are genuinely ill. Second: fakers often go to great lengths to “prove” their illness and that means them using valuable and scarce resources that could have gone to actual ill people. Third: this can affect how sufferers are seen by the outside. For example, had a friend that used to claim she was Schizophrenic who curiously rarely had symptoms and the ones she did “exhibit” were textbook symptoms; as if she did a quick google search for it. And these were the severe symptoms too. Anyways, she was a A student who did sports and excelled at a lot of stuff. I was genuinely diagnosed with Schizoaffective (somewhat related) and my life was actually ruined: hospitalizations, so many meds, had to be on disability and so on. Until recently, friends and family would tell me to just get my act together and have a life since my friend was able to do it so easily. That ended when she eventually stopped telling people she was Schizophrenic and pretended she never said anything like that. She snapped out but the damage was done. It warped what mental illness does to actual people and distorts it to outsiders who then may make uninformed assumptions. That’s why fakers should be of concern and why it’s not as easy as ignoring them because they can’t affect you.