Out Patients

On the essay “Out Patients” written by Elise Wu; she is trying to portray the FD or Factitious Disorder community. She approaches to this community by providing information about the trends or behaviors that the people within this community shows. First, she shares an experience of herself going into emergency showing some presumable symptoms. Something that stand off of this illustration she is providing is that she thinks to herself that people in the emergency room would not expect that she would be sick in the way she was. Here is where the Factitious Disorder comes in. She describes that in the past she have faked her illnesses and by this her relatives were affected. Wu is very descriptive on how this disorder have been named; she provides a list disorders that she found as book titles: “Untangling the Web of Factitious Disorder, Munchausen Syndrome, Munchausen by Proxy, and Malingering.”  these being different yet very similar in the concept of “faking illness” or the manifestation of psychological problems into physical ones.  She also provides information of how people have searched and form communities seeking for help on how to treat people with this disorder. In order to sharpen her information, she provides her own perspective on how this have affected her, she also provides information of how people seek for help on trying to help relatives that suffer from this disorder and the scientific information on how these individuals behave and what their ends are. Lastly, the use of the footnotes serve Wu as a direct reference to where she gets her information from.

Comments ( 3 )

  1. bethanie corona
    Your response clearly shows how Wu uses her personal experiences to strengthen her essay. I like how straightforward and concise your answers are as well.
  2. Yaya Camara
    I really like your explanation of Wu's ER experience. I like how you highlighted that the doctors did not recognize that there are other ways that Wu could be sick.
  3. Yaya Camara
    I liked how you explained Wu's ER experience because you have pinpointed that the doctors didn't take to account the other ways she could have been sick.

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