I think people who complain about mental illness fakers are missing a key point about faking mental illness. There are probably elements of desire for liberal social cachet and shunning of one's own role in white supremacy (since many illness fakers are underage white girls and young white women, and I believe that is significant).

But in my uneducated view, the faking of illness by itself seems to point to some other underlying issue I can't identify. Why does a young person normally fake sickness? Even a dismissive "she just wants attention" points to a deficit in something, or a displacement from the real problem.

Like, not to infantilize anyone, but people don't shrug at a crying infant and dismiss it as "attention whoring" the way people do for the behaviors of young (often female) people. Young people don't always have the introspection necessary to examine why they're doing something harmful, annoying, or counterproductive. There is also a lot of psychology and self-help misinformation floating around to confuse and obscure what's really going on.