Posteral hypotension being denied treatment due to disbelief?

A person who was in a residential school for mentally disabled people reported feelinig dizzy and fainting when he stood up too fast.
They had cliamed to have past-out up to twice a day.

They was on no medication at the time, neither were they in conditions that would obviously cause the syncope (faint).

The person's mother spent months cliaming that she did not believe him.
She, her Granddad and some school staff even told him that he was stanging it; even though he had no medical tests to varify that there was no cause otherwise.

He eventually convinced his mother after falling and bashing his jaw, she ordered that the doctors test him for epilepsy!
Since he told the doctor the symptoms, and the doctor ruled out epilepsy; the doctor failed to order a cardiologist to confirm posteral hypotension through tilt testing (among other testing) for reasons that I cannot understand. There was no reason to assume it was epilepsy without consider other causes.

1) Why did people feel he was staging it?
2) What did he think he could achieve by stanging it?
3) Why did they fail to rule out other causes for the problem before concluding it was staged?
4) Why did they think it was epilepsy and only sucseed in getting the doctor to test for it?
5) Why did the doctor not investigate other causes?
What is this entire sharade all about? I am extremily confused!

Sabretooth

Postural Hypotension - standing up too fast and suddenly feeling faint or dizzy is very common. Its very easy to pretend to do as well.

When it is real, it is caused by low blood pressure. There are many reasons for low blood pressure. But if he wasn't on any meds and didn't appear to have anything else going on, then I'm not surprised it wasn't investigated in depth.

Anyone can get this to some degree at any time. Epilepsy is not usually the conclusion to jump to as that is an entirely different set of symptoms, especially as the person usually "fits" before passing out (becoming unconscious).

I would imaging that as this person was a mental patient, they had his full medical history and regular medical checks to go on. Other factors should be considered before jumping to serious medical conditions: for example, was he dehydrated when this happened? Does he eat well or have nutritional deficiencies? Does he have hypoglycemia/low blood sugar? (what you eat and drink, plus what time of day it is can influence your blood pressure!)

I would have thought though, that these simple things should be checked on for him, before assuming the worst (like a heart condition). Especially as he hurt himself when falling on one occasion. If the postural hypotension causes fainting frequently, then further tests would be advised. His residential school, or his mother if he's at home, should ensure he is thoroughly checked and the situation brought under proper control.

Don't feel bad about being confused. Who wouldn't be?

The doctor probably thought he was staging his syncope because he's not on any medications and he has no medical conditions that would cause syncope. Add to the fact that his mother and grandfather didn't believe the patient probably led the doctor to this conclusion.

The patients mother probably heard about epilepsy from another source and thought her son might have this problem. The doctor probably thought it would be easier just to test him for epilepsy rather than trying to explain to the mother what the doctor felt was going on.

You don't need a cardiologist to rule out postural hypotension. A simple test at the bedside which involves taking the patients pulse and blood pressure while the patient is lying, standing and sitting is usually all that is needed to confirm postural hypotension. You also don't need a cardiologist to order an echocardiogram or an EKG. Those tests were probably done and were read as normal.