People faking illness is so common that there’s a term for it: Munchausen syndrome.⬥ In their book Dying to be Ill, Marc Feldman and Gregory Yates explain that people who pretend to have cancer or other illnesses cannot “resist the pull of obtaining attention or sympathy … these patients fabricate disease and illness in order to reap the rewards of the sick role, which include entitlement to support from others, exemption from social obligations, and a general state of being in need of help, or deserving of special allowances.”
