post random questions daily and see if anyone plays with me and answers them :)

Since today is a New year – do you have any traditions of celebrating it?

She closed her account today…I think she had some hardships in life, so I’m just hoping to know that everything is ok…

Sorry to come up with a serious subject – I just came across an article, which I feel is too good to keep it to myself.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/feb/26/faking-illness-online-munchausen

Several months ago many of us were involved in a heated discussion as to whether or not we had been witnessing this MBI phenomenon (pls don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to discuss it ever again! And my post is completely irrelevant to the subjects of that discussion.) I just thought that those who were involved might enjoy this fabulous article in Guardian. While I feel more emotionally educated after I read it, I still believe that witchhunting is wrong.

Our discussion bothered me, and kept thinking about it again and again – I could not decide is MBI a harmful concept in such community as ours or not? I think at the end I more agree than not with the conclusion of the article. Question: Do you agree?

“MBI is a new concept, too new for the international psychiatric bodies who publish diagnostic criteria to have weighed in on whether it should be recognised as a distinct condition. But for those who specialise in factitious disorder, the idea seems very plausible. “It makes perfect sense that getting sympathy from potentially hundreds of people may be much more powerful than getting it just from one person in a white coat,” says Dr Richard Kanaan, consultant psychiatrist at London’s Maudsley hospital.

Whether feigning illness online or in the real world, fakers are often profoundly disappointed when they’re told they may be ill after all. Many appear to prefer the stigma of being labelled cruel to that of being a psychiatric patient. According to Kanaan, this could be a false distinction. “There’s confusion about where the line lies between being a bad person and being ill. Someone who’s doing this, I’m afraid, could be both.”