Münchausen: Mommy’s Illness Is Killing Me
It became the challenge of any health professional as well as it is becoming more and more frequent in medical offices. It is known as the “Münchausen Syndrome by Proxy” and consists of a personality disorder in which the mother simulates a disease in a child.
For this reason, Münchausen Syndrome is considered a form of child abuse where one of the parents induces real or apparent symptoms of some condition in the child. Of course, if not detected in time, its consequences can be fatal.
Health specialists usually differentiate this pathology from Hypochondriasis in that the latter is characterized by a concern of being ill caused by anxiety or, in some cases, as a symptom of endogenous depression.
Münchausen Syndrome was discovered in 1951 by Dr. Richard Asher and since then it has been considered a “Fictitious Disorder” within the international psychiatric classification. Its name comes from a German military mercenary, the Baron Münchhausen, famous for telling fictional stories about his conquests and adventures.
Münchausen: Causes
Münchausen Syndrome is a rare, poorly understood disorder, and its causes are not yet known for sure. However, it is known to occur due to psychological problems in the adult, a behavior with which it seeks to attract attention. The truth is that he abuses his son by seeking unnecessary medical attention.
Adding blood to the child’s urine or feces, stopping feeding, faking fevers, secretly administering drugs that cause vomiting or diarrhea, infecting the intravenous lines so that the child looks sick or simply is, are some of the tricks that these mothers use to generate symptoms in their children.
Consequently, these little ones spend a large part of their childhood in the corridors of different hospitals and many of them even end up being hospitalized when they present groups of symptoms that do not fit into a known disease.
While the mother is helpful, protective, and dedicated on the hospital stage, the child suffers from all that is involved in undergoing examinations, surgeries, and other annoying and invasive procedures, but unnecessarily.
Münchausen: Everything for medical assistance
This psychopathology is characterized by an obsession or irrepressible and permanent desire to be assisted by medical personnel. This generates in mothers a certain compulsion to wander from hospital to hospital, often with a false name, so that they are treated over and over again without leaving traces in the medical records.
While these moms are aware of cheating, they are not aware of their unconscious motivations to get the attention of others. They are able to manipulate their children and develop a great ability to convince medical staff and family about their child’s illness.
Many others go to the extreme of mistreating their child, potentially poisoning him or causing death by suffocation. And all this responds to a single objective: to obtain a stay in the hospital, with the care and attention that these imply, in order to feel protected and taken into account.
Of symptoms, tests and exams
- The child’s symptoms cannot be pigeonholed into a classic picture of illness, since they do not agree with each other.
- The child’s symptoms usually improve in the hospital but reappear at home.
- The adult is often overly attentive and overly helpful.
- Mothers refuse to allow their children to be separated from their side or to be cared for by someone else.
- Other children who have been in the care of the elder have also suffered from unexplained chronic illnesses.
- Blood samples used for laboratory tests do not match the patient’s blood type.
- Presence of drugs or chemicals in blood, stool, and urine samples.
Münchausen: The figures
Although health specialists point out that the figures do not reflect the frequency with which Münchausen Syndrome occurs in medical offices where it is too common -which is why they estimate percentages higher than those known-, the incidence and prevalence of this syndrome is really worrisome.
This year at least 700 cases have been reported only in Spanish-speaking countries, it is better to clarify that it is a registry of the most severe cases of Munchhausen Syndrome. According to studies, 5% of children with asthma and allergies to certain foods are victims of an adult who suffers from this syndrome.
Likewise, in the United States, approximately 700 cases of poisoning and suffocation are attributed to this syndrome per year. It is even estimated that this disorder is responsible for at least 10% of childhood deaths in North America.
Meanwhile, according to a German criminological statistics, 40% of cases of child abuse are committed by women, of which between 85 to 90 percent suffer from Münchhausen By Power Syndrome.
The children of those who suffer from this disease tend to collaborate with their mothers in their natural desire to be loved, which is why they rarely reveal their martyrdoms. Many times these children who struggle not to expose their mothers, die from this pathological distortion of maternal love.
