While most parents go to the hospital more than we would like, there is the opposite case. What mechanisms come to act in a mother's mind to pretend and even cause her child to be sick? Münchausen syndrome by proxy is a form of child abuse in which one of the parents causes in the child real or apparent symptoms of a disease.
It is a rare syndrome, little known, and it appears when the mother (sometimes also in father or caregivers) causes to pretend illnesses to the child to obtain medical attention. Some parents get to add blood to the urine or stool samples, stop feeding the child or administer drugs so that the symptoms resemble those of the condition they want to simulate.
Falsifying fevers or causing vomiting or diarrhea are other "tricks" that parents use to get unnecessary medical attention. This psychological disorder that involves a search for attention It is also characterized in that those responsible are collaborators with doctors (obviously hiding the true origin of the "disease").
People with Münchausen syndrome by proxy usually have borderline personality disorders or histrionic personality. It is common for problems of various kinds to be present in their romantic relationships, such as that they have just separated, and the father does not usually make an appearance in the hospital or does so to a much lesser extent than the mother.
The medical team may realize that the mother is more interested in getting the doctor's attention than in the patient's own signs and signs. It has been described that, frequently, the adults who take care of the child have medical knowledge beyond the usual ones, sometimes they can even be health professionals.
They are seemingly worried and selfless mothers, so there are no suspicions of abuse. Children who suffer this form of abuse are usually hospitalized for presenting groups of symptoms that do not fit much in any known disease.
It is common for unsuccessful efforts to achieve individualize a diagnosis that explains the symptoms. Children are often made to suffer through exams, surgeries or other annoying, unnecessary or dangerous procedures.
The child's symptoms usually improve in the hospital and always get worse at home, when doctors are not present. If infections or injuries are important, the child may die. The mother is usually reluctant to hospitalization, because in that environment it cannot act.
Real cases of Münchausen syndrome
The term "Münchausen syndrome" It was initially used to describe situations in which patients falsified their own symptoms. In the syndrome Münchausen-by-proxy (or Münchausen-by-power), first described by Meadow in 1977, one of the parents simulates or causes illness in a child.
A common form of Münchausen by power in young children is the simulation of "ALTE" (apparent life theatening events), or events that apparently threaten life, which occur as episodes of apnea and seizures.
An investigation conducted in England in 1996, which monitored 39 cases in which a disease caused by the parents or caregivers was suspected, revealed that in 33 of the cases the parents performed intentional suffocation maneuvers during the hospitalization of the child (30 cases ), one made him ingest a toxic, a mother caused a deliberate fracture and another hit him repeatedly.
I have read some clinical cases that make the hair stand on end, damage caused by suffocating newborn babies (and the possible death caused by four previous babies) or even a mother who causes the almost total paralysis of her daughter and accepted the possibility that she died naturally.
If the syndrome is detected, the authorities must be reported as the child is in danger, the child is protected (treatment of inflicted injuries and psychological treatment may also be necessary) and the mother usually goes to psychological therapy, although They are unaware of effective treatments.
However, it is difficult to find the correct diagnosis and there are ethical complications for professionals who face these cases, sometimes because of how difficult it is to prove the facts, because of the need for interdisciplinary teams (medical and psychological) to be involved and how difficult (and slow) the legal actions necessary to end the abuse occur.
Münchausen syndrome, pretend and cause your child to be sickIt is, in short, a form of elaborate and perverse child abuse, which can be life-threatening for the child involved, regardless of the possible psychological trauma that it can cause.
