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Talk:Primary and secondary gain

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I am new to Wikipedia, so I want to start here so as not to step on any toes. However, the entry for Primary Gain is in error, and major rewrites are needed. I will enter a first draft here - please tell me if this might be an appropriate start at a rewrite:

Source: DSM-IV-TR

Patients' symptoms often have a significant psychological component, and physicians sometimes categorize psychological motivators into primary and secondary gain. Primary gain is an internal, unconscious motivator. For example, if a patient might particularly guilty about being unable to perform some task, their medical symptoms may be amplified as a psychological defense against the guilt. Primary gain can be a component of any disease, but is most dramatically demonstrated in Conversion Disorder (a psychiatric disorder in which stressors manifest themselves as physical symptoms without organic causes - such as a person who becomes blind after seeing a murder). The "gain" may not be particularly evident to an outside observer.

Secondary gain can also be a component of any disease, but is an external motivator. If a patient's disease allows her to miss work, gains her sympathy, or avoids a jail sentence, these would be examples of secondary gain. These may but need not be recognized by the patient. If she is deliberately exaggerating symptoms for personal gain, then she is malingering. However, secondary gain may simply be an unconscious psychologic component of symptoms.

A less-well studied process is tertiary gain: the extent to which the patients symptoms may become more pronounced to subconsciously please health care providers. Riffington 04:20, 22 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

looks good

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Don't worry too much about stepping on toes - Wikipedia is constantly being edited (hopefully) to improve accuracy and clarity. I think the changes you've made are important. You should post them. I especially appreciate the change from "blindly inactive" to "blind" regarding primary gain. EncyclopediaSalesman 13:28, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

this is a really good entry

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Tread away. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.246.36.110 (talk) 01:31, 28 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The correct name and title is Morbid gain. The article should be located there. (At the very very least, Morbid gain should be redirect pointing to this page.  Done) And interwiki links were missing, too. Therefore, I just translated the German article de:Krankheitsgewinn in the hopes of contributing a DYK, and now found out that due to sloppy work, I wasted my time. 78.34.143.45 (talk) 02:24, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]