Community Munchausen's by Internet (Malingerers, Munchies, Spoonies, etc) - Feigning Illnesses for Attention

sperg ahead

opium is a gift. opiates and opioids are still the best and most reliable medication we've ever found that works for multiple ills. In controlled use, it ends pain- physical and psychological.

Tolerance is the bitch of it. A controlled dose with tolerance breaks can save lives. Uncontrolled medication with these drugs is the problem.

Benzodiazepines are also a miracle. They have a low profile, side effects are often actually useful. For seizures, anxiety, hypochondria, insomnia, and many other things, they're fantastic. Again, tolerance is the bitch- though these drugs can often be taken at the same dose for decades.

Tolerance, with benzodiazepines, is more of a matter of perception. The drug has the same effect every time, but people no longer get the initial high from it after a while. They're chasing that. Using them like SSRIs, where you anticipate that the drug won't be felt "kicking in" but that the body will get used to it, can be more successful.

Both drug classes need to be tapered. Benzos can kill you if you go cold turkey, at least seizures will result. Both classes of drug are incredibly useful and very nearly medical magic. They have a place. We shouldn't be as afraid of using them as we are encouraged to be.

Munchies get prescribed these drugs not only for pain and fear, but also because opi-drugs do have a pronounced anti depressant effect, and benzos kill anxiety.

For people who are seeking out a "better" diagnosis than depression or anxiety, these drugs imply a physical illness, and are seen as acceptable. Even though for a lot of the munchie favorite diseases, an SSRI or SNRI would actually work. Digestive diseases can be straight up cured by regulating serotonin.

The implication that it's all in their head, that's what chaps them and sends them to the next doctor. A lot of doctors fall into the trap of wanting to monitor these patients, to control their medication doses, to try to hang onto them so they don't slide further to end stage (j tubes, ostomy, infusions, sepsis, etc)

You can't control them though. They want attention even if it kills them.

you can't control munchies, end stage comes to them all. whether they're binge eating, causing infections, faking symptoms, or starving themselves... you can't expect to treat them like regular patients and that becomes obvious pretty quickly.
 
Yes, but when you tell the person the pain is due to depression or is rooted in a psychological condition they shit the bed and throw a fit, demanding a physical diagnosis instead of addressing their mental issues causing the pain.



Society would be down the shitter pretty fast if a comfy middle class income was provided to everyone with depression/anxiety that couldn’t or didn’t feel like working. The system is already fucked thanks to the rampant abuse by people who could work but don’t. Capitalist society would collapse just like the USSR if your provided a comfy income for merely existing and claiming a right to benefits, without ever paying into the system. You’d have half the population claiming depression and anxiety issues if it meant they could sit on their ass watching Netflix, shit posting and eating chicken wings all day in an apt for free.

A good disability income is paid to people who PAID into the system while they worked for years, it’s usually based upon their earnings before becoming disabled. Its deducted from paychecks as disability insurance/ worker’s compensation.

Safety nets can do as much harm as help. There are regions of the USA over run with people who get govt checks that can work, but that check becomes their crutch. It’s easy to get stuck in a rut if there’s no motivation to get out of it. Learned dependence is a troubling issue.

My idea of society would go down the shitter if those in need weren't cared for with dignity regardless of their financial contribution thusfar. Some kid on his last day of high school gets hit by a drunk driver and is rendered a quadrapligic - I want him in a nice place with all the chicken wings he wants shit posting here when he is done at college.

There should be safeguards in place to keep out the liars and the malingerers, and some decent investment in research into these questionable conditions would kill two birds with one stone.
 
benzo WD can literally kill you, and they were way over-rxed, same as opiates

you dumbshit drug-seeker

If only they knew that.

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Oh wait.
 
The point was it seems to be an affliction in the comfortable west. You don’t have “Fibro” or other munchie ailments in developing countries probably because there’s no benefit to it. No one is going to give the woman in Bangeldesh $500 a month to stay home if she claims she has Fibro or depression. They get up everyday and work to eat and survive.

Even mental issues like depression and anxiety aren’t major issues outside of the western world, even in places where you have ppl that have experienced things which if a westerner experienced even 1/10th they would declare lifelong PTSD and stay in bed for the rest of their lives sobbing.

Survival keeps people pushing on and living - and they are happier for it usually. Once you start funding people to lay in bed and wallow, game over. They will never have the motivation to get out of the pit. I can show you trailer parks and housing projects full of such people. The kicker is, they are unhappy and miserable because you’ve taken away any reason for them to get out of the bed in the morning. Self-sufficiency (or at least the feeling of it) make for much more content humans. It gives purpose to their life which is vital for happiness, or at least not being miserable and depressed.
The fact that mental health conditions like depression and anxiety long did not appear to be major issues in the developing world is an artifact of limited data collection. Countries reporting a low disability prevalence rate – predominantly developing countries – tended to collect and report data on only a limited range of impairments.

Lifetime prevalence estimates of major depression vary widely across countries, with prevalence generally higher in high-income versus low- and middle-income countries. Still, per Global Health Observatory data, the most prevalent disabling condition in the developing world is depression, followed by lower back pain.

Mental-health-wise, the major differences between high-income countries and low- and middle-income countries is that elderly women and young adults of both sexes in low- and middle-income countries have much higher suicide rates than their counterparts in high-income countries, whereas middle-aged men in high-income countries have much higher suicide rates than middle-aged men in low- and middle-income countries.

e: You start to run into multiple-comparisons statistical power issues here, but it is plausible that people in the developing world are less likely to wallow in depression their whole lives not because they have no choice but to get up, get over it, and thereby find purpose and meaning, but because they are more likely to kill themselves young.

e again: What you can do, statistically, is show that, if the rate of depression is constant among young people worldwide, and you condition on relative mental health services availability and suicide rates, it turns out that the rate of depression will appear lower among young people in the developing world because more of them are likely to kill themselves before they're even diagnosed.

[e yet again: Well, you can do this, statistically, but you shouldn't. What I did here - wading into a data set after the fact and cherry-picking what variables to analyze and results to present to get a significant result - is bad practice. It's not a bad thing to do, necessarily, if you are trying to build intuition and figure out where to take your research next. But if I tried to publish something like this, especially if I were presenting technical data to a non-technical audience, it would actually be unethical. I'm just spitballing because I wanted to see how the numbers shook out. I can see how my spitballing here is a distraction from my intended point, which was that major depressive disorder is the most common disabling condition in the developing world.]
 
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The fact that mental health conditions like depression and anxiety did not appear to be major issues in the developing world is an artifact of limited data collection. Countries reporting a low disability prevalence rate – predominantly developing countries – tended to collect and report data on only a limited range of impairments.

Lifetime prevalence estimates of major depression vary widely across countries, with prevalence generally higher in high income versus low-middle income countries. Still, per Global Health Observatory data, the most prevalent disabling condition in the developing world is depression, followed by lower back pain.

Mental-health-wise, the major differences between high-income countries and low- and middle-income countries is that elderly women and young adults of both sexes in low- and middle-income countries have much higher suicide rates than their counterparts in high-income countries, whereas middle-aged men in high-income countries have much higher suicide rates than middle-aged men in low- and middle-income countries.

e: You start to run into multiple-comparisons statistical power issues here, but it is plausible that people in the developing world are less likely to wallow in depression their whole lives not because they have no choice but to get up, get over it, and thereby find purpose and meaning, but because they are more likely to kill themselves young.

Suicide rates are different from depression rates.

I think the word depression is vastly over-used and Dx in the west and underused and under Dx outside the west. I think situational depression is far more prevelant in the developing world, whereas major and chronic depression is more common in the west.

The western media also feeds very unattainable ideals that create festering dissatisfaction and depression in otherwise healthy people.

In the west depression is almost always cited as the reason for suicide. But Economic ruin is a common reason for suicide worldwide. Robin Williams who had been diagnosed with a terrible terminal illness is viewed as having committed suicide due to depression, instead of wanting to avoid a slow painful death. Escaping extreme abuse, forced marriage and grinding poverty is a reason for suicide in many parts of the developing world.

You have girls in afghanistan who self-immolate due to their treatment by their family and forced marriages. The highest rates of suicide for Africans correlate to extreme rural poverty - drinking pesticides for crops is the main suicide method in Africa. The 2008 economic crisis in China sky rocketed their suicide rate, due to ppl losing their money and being faced with poverty. All this is to say there are many external reasons for suicide that aren’t related to major depression.

In the west you have people who’s physical needs are taken care of, but who are severely depressed and might commit suicide as a result. So their suicide is due to depression.

Outside the west you can have living conditions that are so difficult (physical, mental and sexual abuse or the threat of real poverty in places with no social safety net) that suicide is viewed as the only way to escape the abuse, to avoid starving to death or the shame of being a beggar or burden to family.

The 15 year old girl in Afghanistan sets herself on fire because her brothers and father beat her, make her a slave that can’t leave the house and intend to sell her off as a second wife to 55 year old man who will rape and beat her. If you want to call the reason for her suicide depression you can, but had she been able to escape the abuse and subjugation she most certainly would not have killed herself. She should be depressed or unhappy with her situation, being satisfied or happy in that situation would be abnormal.

It’s akin to someone being depressed because they lost a child or spouse - that’s normal and how they should feel (situational depression due to grief). Compared to someone who is depressed for no external or definable reason.

Depression is a terrible and painful no matter it’s cause, but situational depression is more common in developing countries. If you ask a person in the developing world why they are depressed most can list reasons such as raised as an orphan, constant abuse, struggle to survive, not being able to care for their children, loss of family, miserable living situation, forced into sex work, not wanting to be a burden on family, etc...

Whereas in the west the reasons tend to be far more existential or undefinable.

One of the main recommendations for depression is regular exercise, sunlight and social engagement. Because of the need to survive and eat people in developing countries get out of bed, are physically active and interact with others every day even if they are struggling with depression. In the west a depressed person can get on disability and the govt ensures their survival, food and shelter. Because of this many retreat to their bedrooms, lay in bed and isolate which accerbates their depression a great deal.

Simply the activities of basic survival help the symptoms of depression, whereas removing the activities of survival tend to increase depression. The worst thing for a depressed person to do is stay in bed all day and isolate, but that is what tends to happen to people on disability in the west which then leads to even more mental and physical problems over time.
 
Suicide rates are different from depression rates.

I think the word depression is vastly over-used and Dx in the west and underused and under Dx outside the west. I think situational depression is far more prevelant in the developing world, whereas major and chronic depression is more common in the west.

The western media also feeds very unattainable ideals that create festering dissatisfaction and depression in otherwise healthy people.

In the west depression is almost always cited as the reason for suicide. But Economic ruin is a common reason for suicide worldwide. Robin Williams who had been diagnosed with a terrible terminal illness is viewed as having committed suicide due to depression, instead of wanting to avoid a slow painful death. Escaping extreme abuse, forced marriage and grinding poverty is a reason for suicide in many parts of the developing world.

You have girls in afghanistan who self-immolate due to their treatment by their family and forced marriages. The highest rates of suicide for Africans correlate to extreme rural poverty - drinking pesticides for crops is the main suicide method in Africa. The 2008 economic crisis in China sky rocketed their suicide rate, due to ppl losing their money and being faced with poverty. All this is to say there are many external reasons for suicide that aren’t related to major depression.

In the west you have people who’s physical needs are taken care of, but who are severely depressed and might commit suicide as a result. So their suicide is due to depression.

Outside the west you can have living conditions that are so difficult (physical, mental and sexual abuse or the threat of real poverty in places with no social safety net) that suicide is viewed as the only way to escape the abuse, to avoid starving to death or the shame of being a beggar or burden to family.

The 15 year old girl in Afghanistan sets herself on fire because her brothers and father beat her, make her a slave that can’t leave the house and intend to sell her off as a second wife to 55 year old man who will rape and beat her. If you want to call the reason for her suicide depression you can, but had she been able to escape the abuse and subjugation she most certainly would not have killed herself. She should be depressed or unhappy with her situation, being satisfied or happy in that situation would be abnormal.

It’s akin to someone being depressed because they lost a child or spouse - that’s normal and how they should feel (situational depression due to grief). Compared to someone who is depressed for no external or definable reason.

Depression is a terrible and painful no matter it’s cause, but situational depression is more common in developing countries. If you ask a person in the developing world why they are depressed most can list reasons such as raised as an orphan, constant abuse, struggle to survive, not being able to care for their children, loss of family, miserable living situation, forced into sex work, not wanting to be a burden on family, etc...

Whereas in the west the reasons tend to be far more existential or undefinable.

One of the main recommendations for depression is regular exercise, sunlight and social engagement. Because of the need to survive and eat people in developing countries get out of bed, are physically active and interact with others every day even if they are struggling with depression. In the west a depressed person can get on disability and the govt ensures their survival, food and shelter. Because of this many retreat to their bedrooms, lay in bed and isolate which accerbates their depression a great deal.

Simply the activities of basic survival help the symptoms of depression, whereas removing the activities of survival tend to increase depression. The worst thing for a depressed person to do is stay in bed all day and isolate, but that is what tends to happen to people on disability in the west which then leads to even more mental and physical problems over time.
I linked to the raw numbers, but it's worth emphasizing that the WHO's analysis controlled for confounding factors like conflict, which increases depression rates, and the presence of other serious public health issues, which make depression less of a public health priority, when concluding depression was the most common disabling condition in the developing world. These results specifically pertained to major depressive disorder, not situational depression.

Lower back pain used to be the most common disabling condition in the developing world, but fell to second place in 2017. Whether this has to do with more people becoming depressed or more people being diagnosed with depression is an open question.

I was doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations regarding all-cause depression and suicide rates, just to see how the numbers shook out. That was only me spitballing out of curiosity.

[e: I certainly buy that people who live in traditional communities have fewer opportunities to isolate during depressive episodes than people whose primary support system is a faceless bureaucracy, and that this is very much to their benefit. That's not a point I am arguing against!]

My point was that, based on the best available global health data, it is categorically incorrect to state that mental issues like depression and anxiety aren’t major issues outside of the western world,
 
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It's also a way for doctors to churn patients with harder to diagnose issues. No underpaid and overworked GP wants to deal with hard to diagnose seronegative inflamatory conditions. Diagnose with fibro, give them some pain meds, and go on with your life. Maybe the specialist will catch it.

I was lumped into fibro for years until unrelated testing showed I had sero-negative arthritis.
This is what I was thinking. Here are some quotes from r/medicine discussing fibro:

I've had a couple people come to my clinic with diagnosis of fibromyalgia and they have good old fashioned arthritis of the knees and hips, low back pain and rotator cuff tendinitis. It's supposed to be a diagnosis of exclusion! Which really points to the sad fact that doctors aren't physically examining their patients.

I once spoke with a lady in the waiting room of a clinic, who was trying to get seen for infertility, suspected thyroid issues and possibly a hormonal disorder. She had a few family members that had problems with their thyroid, hypothalamus and a few folks with goiters. Plus she also had a downy sheen of hair on her chin and cheeks and was overweight.

The doctor without touching her or offering bloodwork told her she had fibro, gave her a script for cymbalta and told her to stop shoving cake in her face. She was there with her husband, who said he never met anyone so disrespectful like that before.

I'm a thyroid patient myself (hemithyroidectomy and I am the 20% that needs medication post op), and my sister has hashimotos and PCOS. I am pretty sure that lady had similar issues as my sister.

I was told to always rule out other causes (and especially autoimmune diseases such as lupus), even if they supposedly have been worked up already by another physician. Totally anecdotal evidence, but I have seen quite a few people show up to the ER with fibromyalgia pain that had a malar rash and a positive ANA in addition to their muscular pain.
(a malar rash and a positive ANA means they have lupus)
 
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Someone requested a little more info on the lupus poster in r/validgrief.

GQumj0y.jpgORYy2_vTa4MQ989X2vXKy41M9nEUnztPWWyZsegi4d4.jpg
the second image posted on r/littlespace

u/EllaSuaveterre also posts under u/AdloraOfSolitude

born 3 months premature, has cerebral palsy, fibro/chronic fatigue, ptsd, depression, anorexia, retinopathy of prematurity, borderline, lupus and more! - archive cheated on her husband with some guy from an mmo and has created r/SurvivingMyInfidelity to deal with it as publicly as she can.

This is her long winded r/validgrief post using jaquies passing as a platform for pity points. ya'll shes totally dying -archive

she posted This initially in r/malingering opening up about her love of being ott and how she embraces being a dramatic a-hole. predictably (and rightfully so) the user base freaks out and tells her she is batshit - archive

744461

Link


shes got a few pretty lulzy posts strewn about but its all mainly her cheating, loving being sick and getting help being an sick ana butterfly. a few freakout about climate and trump in there for healthy measure.

744417

Link

bonus onision style pedo sperging
ped.png
cheats irl and wants to safely cheat in sims lol
cheat.png
 

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I linked to the raw numbers, but it's worth emphasizing that the WHO's analysis controlled for confounding factors like conflict, which increases depression rates, and the presence of other serious public health issues, which make depression less of a public health priority, when concluding depression was the most common disabling condition in the developing world. These results specifically pertained to major depressive disorder, not situational depression.

Lower back pain used to be the most common disabling condition in the developing world, but fell to second place in 2017. Whether this has to do with more people becoming depressed or more people being diagnosed with depression is an open question.

I was doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations regarding all-cause depression and suicide rates, just to see how the numbers shook out. That was just me spitballing.

My point was that, based on the best available global health data, it is categorically incorrect to state that mental issues like depression and anxiety aren’t major issues outside of the western world,

This has veered widely OT since it started as depression causing fibro/ fibro not being diagnosed outside the west. My point is disability system in the west tends to exacerbates depression, rather than help. The road to hell is paved with good intentions stuff. While the idea of disability payments for depressed/fibro patients is good, the execution is terrible. The govt providing income for a depressed person long term without any treatment plan or criteria to go with it is dangerous because it allows them to do what is really bad for them- stay indoors, stay in bed, isolate from others, give up. It's akin to giving a addict $10,000 cash, it allows them to indulge in what they want but not what they need to get better.

Many people on disability for depression (and other issues) will reject any attempts at getting better because they start to believe that check is the most important thing in their life and getting better endangers it. It can breed an intense fatalism which is toxic for depression.

The system has created an entire population of people who live their life being "sick" as a career. The government has incentivized being depressed and disincentivized trying to get better. The munchies we follow on this board and on R/illness fakers are extreme examples of this phenomenon. The government gives them money, SM gives them attention - it's a toxic combo. While the more extreme munchies have a factitious disorder, others just have garden variety depression at the root of many of their issues. Their lives and income revolve around being sick.
 
This has veered widely OT since it started as depression causing fibro/ fibro not being diagnosed outside the west. My point is disability system in the west tends to exacerbates depression, rather than help. The road to hell is paved with good intentions stuff. While the idea of disability payments for depressed/fibro patients is good, the execution is terrible. The govt providing income for a depressed person long term without any treatment plan or criteria to go with it is dangerous because it allows them to do what is really bad for them- stay indoors, stay in bed, isolate from others, give up. It's akin to giving a addict $10,000 cash, it allows them to indulge in what they want but not what they need to get better.

Many people on disability for depression (and other issues) will reject any attempts at getting better because they start to believe that check is the most important thing in their life and getting better endangers it. It can breed an intense fatalism which is toxic for depression.

The system has created an entire population of people who live their life being "sick" as a career. The government has incentivized being depressed and disincentivized trying to get better. The munchies we follow on this board and on R/illness fakers are extreme examples of this phenomenon. The government gives them money, SM gives them attention - it's a toxic combo. While the more extreme munchies have a factitious disorder, others just have garden variety depression at the root of many of their issues. Their lives and income revolve around being sick.
if you look at the data for the US, the rates of people getting disability money went way up after they cut welfare in 1996. people who live in some dirt poor appalachian holler are just trying to survive. this is why there's so much disability money for fuzzy disabilities--people in the local welfare offices don't want their friends and relatives and neighbors to starve, so, yeah, sure, you have low back pain (who in a community where nearly every job is physical labor doesn't have low back pain?), here's a check. and this also allows for munchies to slip in.
 
why shouldn't people who are in pain every day make a fuss about it? try to find a way not to have to struggle on, but to improve their lives?
Becuase most of these people don't want to improve their lives, they want a quick solution for their problems or, worst, a palliative. High stress and mental illness can produce pseudo-symptoms of other physical diseases in organs and systems, and many times, those are produced by a messy life full of bad choices not by any chronic disease. Change your habits, change your diet, and you are very likely to start feeling better.
 
I think the problem is that fibro is a catch all. It’s not helped by the fact that GPs are under pressure not to refer, and certain guidelines hamstring them. The reference ranges for TSH in the UK are insanely broad. GPs often only test TSH, and don’t do a full thyroid panel. Any rheumatic symptoms you might get a RF test but RF alone isn’t very useful - citrulin, ANA etc are more informative. Plus there’s a whole slew of arthritic conditions that are seronegative. Even things like spondylarthropathies don’t have hard and fast blood markers - most patients have the hlab27 gene but not all by any means. You need an MRI to see early stage changes and that’s expensive.

So you’ve got a mixed population of malingerers, women suffering from rheumatic and thyroid issues that could be sorted out with correct diagnosis and treatment and somatised depression (shit life syndrome.)

In other cultures somatisation of depression is much more socially acceptable and some cultures have unique ailments that are accepted and treated sympathetically that just don’t exist elsewhere (heavy legs in France springs to mind, but let me go find examples and I’ll come back and edit this because it is relevant to munchie ism.)

What we don’t have in the West is that culturally accepted somatic illness - perhaps if we did it’d be beneficial? Perhaps some munchies are actually manifesting this in a western context??

Edited to add the term I was looking for is culture bound syndromes - a fascinating rabbithole if you’re bored.

 
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I think the problem is that fibro is a catch all. It’s not helped by the fact that GPs are under pressure not to refer, and certain guidelines hamstring them. The reference ranges for TSH in the UK are insanely broad. GPs often only test TSH, and don’t do a full thyroid panel. Any rheumatic symptoms you might get a RF test but RF alone isn’t very useful - citrulin, ANA etc are more informative. Plus there’s a whole slew of arthritic conditions that are seronegative. Even things like spondylarthropathies don’t have hard and fast blood markers - most patients have the hlab27 gene but not all by any means. You need an MRI to see early stage changes and that’s expensive.

So you’ve got a mixed population of malingerers, women suffering from rheumatic and thyroid issues that could be sorted out with correct diagnosis and treatment and somatised depression (shit life syndrome.)

In other cultures somatisation of depression is much more socially acceptable and some cultures have unique ailments that are accepted and treated sympathetically that just don’t exist elsewhere (heavy legs in France springs to mind, but let me go find examples and I’ll come back and edit this because it is relevant to munchie ism.)

What we don’t have in the West is that culturally accepted somatic illness - perhaps if we did it’d be beneficial? Perhaps some munchies are actually manifesting this in a western context??

Edited to add the term I was looking for is culture bound syndromes - a fascinating rabbithole if you’re bored.


Aaaaah, running amok! Love that shit. Had no idea there was a world more, off I boing, thanks!

edit to add - there's an actual "brain fag syndrome" you guise!!!

brain fags on wiki
 
Update on @chronically_jordan on instagram: she must have found out that shes on KF bc she now went inactive on her munchie acc. She hasnt posted on there since maybe october of 2018. She is still active on her personal insta though and magically no longer has chronic illnesses. Good thing she finally realized that being a munchie doesnt get her positive attention and only winds up being a bad thing. She is also inactive on her “service dog” (aka family pet) acc


Edit: the @ is actually @chronically.jordan , i always forget whether its an _ or a .
 
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Christine just keeps going

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Getting mad people werent receptive to her telling them to stop shitting on ott people because jaquie DIED and that people are telling no to requesting being a mod and still uses it as an excuse to wax poetic about her frail sickly precious body uwu. -archive


"My doctor says I don't have lupus, but I totally have lupus and I AM DYING."

:story:

Also, her pedo sperging about her perv husband is just wow.

Thank you for delivering!
 
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