Diagnosing and Managing Comorbid Factitious Disorder in a Borderline Personality Disorder: A Case Report

This case demonstrates a comorbid Borderline Personality Disorder and Factitious Disorder situation, uncommon and sparsely described in the literature. Our purpose in sharing it resides as means to augment scientific data and possibly help manage similar situations. This case represents a patient with Borderline Personality Disorder, from an outpatient setting, who was hospitalized due to a mixed state suspicion. She then developed consciousness and behavior changes. Firstly, it resembled a delirium, although there was no obvious explanation for it and besides benzodiazepines in her system, all lab exams were clear. When her consciousness was recovered she was confronted with family information we gathered, and admitted self-injuring (excessive medication) as a means to pretend a stroke, as well forged cancer and chemotherapy symptoms (she cut off all her hair), in order to receive her children’s attention. She was later discharged and oriented to a mental rehabilitation institution. Factitious Disorder is an underdiagnosed and confounding condition and possibly correlated to Borderline Personality Disorder. Despite some literature demonstrating a comorbidity relation between Borderline Personality Disorder and Factitious Disorder, there is still controversy among authors, as well as sparse data. This patient showed a clear comorbidity between these two disorders, which corroborates their connection.