Factitious disorders and pathological self-harm in a hospital population: an interdisciplinary challenge.

Factitious disorder, Munchausen's Syndrome, and deliberate self-harm have recently been conceptualized as different facets of self-destructive behavior. A descriptive typological classification has been presented by Willenberg et al., but has not yet been tested with a clinical sample.

[Self-destructive behaviour - occurrence and typological classification in an university psychosomatic unit].

The occurrence of self-destructive phenomena (direct self-harm; self-induced disease; self-harm delegated to medical staff) in all patients referred to the psychosomatic consultation service and all outpatients during 14 months and all discharged of the psychosomatic ward during 2 months (N=1057) is determined by the typological-descriptive assessment of Willenberg et al. (1997). Self-destructive behaviour was documented in n=79 cases (7.