Aggravation

AGGRAVATION (from Latin aggravare - to increase severity), exaggeration of phenomena, predominantly disease symptoms. The term A. appears in legal, insurance, and military-sanitary practice and in psychiatry. Unlike genuine simulation (see), i.e., conscious imitation of disease symptoms by a healthy person, in A. patients exaggerate the manifestations of their actual disease, in which case it is often difficult to establish the boundary of exaggeration. Among individuals with mental disorders, imbeciles, morons, hysterics, and others are most prone to A. Most often they exaggerate the manifestations of their actual illness or introduce into the picture of their condition features from mental disorders they themselves have experienced or observed. Here it is particularly difficult to diagnose A. and separate it from genuine mental disorder - there are no diagnostic signs. Additionally, the desire to become ill, to appear ill, sometimes leads to psychogenic disorders. - Malicious exaggeration of the severity of an existing illness for the purpose of evading military service is a criminally punishable act and is provided for in Article 68 of the Criminal Code. * Possible sources of errors when using the agglutination reaction in each individual case, as well as methods for eliminating these errors, are indicated in the relevant articles devoted to the description of individual infectious forms.