The ethical and legal management of suspected Factitious Disorder focuses on compassionate care while protecting safety and meeting safeguarding duties. The best approach emphasizes avoiding stigma, treating the patient with respect, and carefully documenting all findings, uncertainties, and the care plan. It also requires considering safeguarding if there is any concern of abuse or harm to a vulnerable person, which may trigger mandatory reporting or protective actions under the law. This foundation supports a nonjudgmental, collaborative assessment that prioritizes patient safety, accurate diagnosis, and appropriate multidisciplinary involvement. Confrontational questioning to verify deception tends to damage trust, can escalate distress, and is not an effective or ethical way to confirm the diagnosis. Ignoring safeguarding concerns is unethical and often illegal, as clinicians have a duty to protect vulnerable individuals when abuse or neglect is suspected. Relying on patient testimony alone is unreliable in Factitious Disorder because patients may intentionally misrepresent or falsify symptoms; diagnosis and management require corroborating information, collateral data, and objective findings, with attention to safety and appropriate referrals.

The main idea is that conversion disorder (functional neurological symptom disorder) involves neurological-type symptoms that cannot be explained by any neurological or medical disease. Clinicians look for symptoms that are incompatible with neurology and for no medical condition that fully accounts for them. If a clear neurological disease explains the symptoms, it wouldn’t be labeled conversion disorder. So the diagnosis does not require that the symptoms be explained by a neurological disease; it’s diagnosed precisely when there is no adequate neurological explanation. This is why the statement is false.

Non-epileptic attacks in conversion disorder most often begin in young adulthood. The pattern seen in clinical data shows the highest frequency of onset during the 20s, which is the third decade of life (roughly ages 20–29). This reflects how functional neurological symptoms frequently emerge during periods of psychosocial stress in early adulthood. While such symptoms can appear at other ages, the peak is in the 20s, making that the best answer. Remember these episodes mimic seizures but are not due to epilepsy.

In Somatic Symptom Disorder, the key is the way a person responds to somatic symptoms, not just whether a medical explanation is found. The disorder requires one or more somatic symptoms plus disproportionate thoughts about their seriousness, persistent high anxiety about health, and/or excessive time and energy devoted to the symptoms. Importantly, these criteria can apply even if the symptoms have a medical explanation, or if no clear explanation is found. So simply having somatic symptoms without a medical cause by itself is not enough to diagnose SSD; there must be that maladaptive cognitive–behavioral response to the symptoms. For example, chronic pain that is accompanied by persistent, excessive worry and frequent doctor visits would meet SSD, whereas pain with no such preoccupation would not.