Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy

MSBP is a rare behavioral disorder that affects a caretaker or guardian usually the mother. The

patient gets attention by looking for medical help for exaggerated or made up symptoms of a person

usually a child in their care. It was originally coined in phrase by Roy Meadows. While doctors try to find

the cause of the symptoms the caretakers actions purposely affect the symptoms often worsening them.

Meanwhile the doctors never suspect the caretaker as the cause of the illness. The caretaker actually

tends to appear loving, caring, and extremely upset over the child or person they are taking care of’s

illness. There are many ways the caretaker can exaggerate symptoms by lying, altering tests, falsifying

medical records, or by actually inducing symptoms through many ways like poisoning, smothering,

starving, and inducing infection.

There are common characteristics in people with MSBP for instance it’s a parent or caregiver,

usually the mother, they could be a health care professional, they are friendly and cooperate with health

care professionals, seem to be very concerned about the child. They may suffer from Munchausen

Syndrome which is a disorder similar to MSBP where the patient acts as if they are physically or mentally

ill repetitively when they aren’t even sick. There are other possible warning signs of MSBP, as in, the

child having a history of multiple hospitalizations usually with strange set of symptoms, worsening of

symptoms being noticed generally by the caretaker and not staff, the condition and symptoms reported

usually don’t match test results, multiple strange illnesses or deaths of children in the family, condition

improving in hospital but recur once home, blood in lab samples don’t match child’s blood, or there

being signs of chemicals in the child’s blood.

There aren’t any reliable statistics for the amount of people in the United States that suffer from

MSBP, and there’s difficulty assessing the commonness of the disorder since so many cases go

undiagnosed. Diagnosing the disorder is difficult because of the level of dishonesty that is involved.

Health professionals have to rule out any possibility of physical illness as causing the child’s illness

before they can give the diagnosis of MSBP. If a physical cause cannot be found they then do a thorough

review of medical history, as well as reviewing of the family history may give clues suggesting MSBP.

Please keepo in mind it’s the adult and not the child that gets diagnosed with Munchausen Syndrome By

Proxy.

The primary concern is to make sure the child is safe and protected, the child may have to be

placed in another home. In order to manage a case with MSBP you often need a team including social

workers, foster care organizations, law enforcement, and doctors. It’s difficult to successfully treat those

who suffer from MSBP because the sufferer often say there isn’t a problem. Besides the fact that for

treatment to be successful the person has to be truthful. Which is unlikely seeing as how they tend to be

accomplished liars and the start to have problems telling fact from fiction. Psychotherapy usually

focuses on attempting to change the thinking and behavior of the one with MSBP. The goal of

psychotherapy is to help identify the contributing thoughts and feelings, and learn how to form

relationships that have nothing to do with being sick.

MSBP can lead to serious long and short term problems like continued abuse, many

hospitalizations, and possibly death, with research suggesting the death rate is about 10%. Sometimes a

child of MSBP learns how to relate attention to being sick and develops Munchausen Syndrome

themselves. MSBP is hard to treat and usually needs years of support and therapy. MSBP is also

considered a form of child abuse and is a criminal offense, with no form of prevention available.

Another interesting piece of information I found was that Munchausen Syndrome and MSBP

were named after a German cavalry officer Baron Karl Friedrich von Munchausen of the 18 th century. He

was widely traveled and well known for his dramatic yet untruthful stories like the ones he told about

riding a cannonball to the moon. They later created movies and books based off of these tale tells he

liked to tell. All in all I think if you want to get in the medical field MSBP is something you should be

educated about, MSBP does not decriminate.