as bad as it is, perhaps women are more often attention seekers than men.
just think of munchhausen mothers (inflicting harm to their child, in order to have attention).
?
Munchausen's by proxy is an issue we all might be interested in, as the diagnosis can be misused in cases of unexplained illness. There are a couple of prominent court cases where mothers were convicted of murdering their babies based almost entirely on this diagnosis, and were later overturned on the basis of lack of evidence.
The diagnosis bears some similarities to somatic symptom disorder in that the primary symptom is the presenting medical complaints of the "victim", and a lack of alternative explanations for them (sound familiar?). Pretty much nothing else is needed.
Like somatic symptom disorder, it is unclear whether this "disorder" exists at all. The problem is that there's not much
positive evidence to support it, just an absence of alternative explanations. Its kind of a 20th century psychological construction (attention-seeking may well exist, but such extreme forms may be rarer than, say, serial killers).
@roller, you should also be aware that this diagnosis has been used to justify removing minors with MECFS from their parents and insitutionalising them. The reasoning is that, since there's nothing wrong with the child that can be measured, and the parents keep seeking medical advice, that they are deliberately constructing the child's illness to gain attention.
Okay, I'm just an irrational, emotional, attention-seeking female, but that's my take on it.
Now that's enough,
@roller,
@panckage, let's have no more of these silly ill-thought-out statements about differences between men women. If you can't think it through and come up with something intelligent to say, please refrain from sharing (feel free to say silly ill-thought-out things in all other contexts, we're fine with that, just not when it involves to stereotyping or denigrating particular groups of people).