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A Strange Parenting Disorder: Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy

 
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Have you ever taken deliberate actions to make your child sick? This sounds a gruesome statement for sane parents, right? Unfortunately, there are parents who either induce illness or fabricate symptoms so their child can assume a sick role.

This is the strange parenting disorder called Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy or MSbP, a name originated from Baron Von Munchausen, a famous traveller known for his outlandish stories. The majority of the offenders in reported MSbP cases are mothers with victims who are commonly preschool children, though occasional infant and teenager cases are reported too.

The mothers or caregivers usually simulate illness by fabricating symptoms, like providing false medical history, exaggerating medical conditions, faking evidence or doing the most sinister way, which is inducing illness. They can add a drop of blood in the child’s urine sample to fake evidence or perhaps injects a harmful fluid in the child to induce illness.

These cases will go unnoticed for long periods of time because it is difficult to detect. Doctors usually rely on parents' statements for symptoms and medical history during initial consultations, though these claimed medical symptoms are oftentimes proven wrong in the laboratory test results. However, the child’s illness will persist because the mother continues to assert the symptoms that the child suffers.

The only indication that will tell if the child is a victim of MSbP is the time the child is away from the perpetrator. The child is well, healthy and never or rarely gets sick during the absence of their mother or caretaker.

Though Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy stirs a great level of controversy, this condition is considered as one of the most harmful forms of child abuse. Being familiar with this strange parenting disorder can help you somehow save a vulnerable and defenseless child from such harmful abuse.

Sources: www.kidshealth.org, BBC News Health

Cyra Miles is a freelance writer living in Abu Dhabi, UAE and her areas of interest are travel, events & holidays, health, culture & society, human interest stories and education. Her writing services include SEO writing, webpage content, article writing, blogs, essays and feature writing.

Visit her at http://www.cyramiles.com/

Add a Comment17 Comments

EmpowHER Guest
Anonymous

You may not believe in Munchausens by Proxy, either due to some weird parental paranoia, or just because you distrust the medical professionals out there. But I promise you exists. My mother had this when I was a child. She was desperate for attention and used to be convinced I was dying every time I got the sniffles. She moved onto creating illnesses for me. More than once she injected me with small amounts of drugs to make me collapse. She broke my arm, she injected me with animal blood, she drugged me, she did everything she could to fabricate more illnesses.

If it wasn't for the 'baby snatchers' you all decry, I'd be dead right now. As it happens, I do have various recurring problems from what she did to me. So don't let your fear and ignorance get in the way of understanding a real, serious, mental disorder. It's out there people.

February 27, 2010 - 6:21pm
EmpowHER Guest
Anonymous

just wondered if with all the research that you must of done ,to enable you to write on such a subject.(oh but of course you are not silenced by the Family Courts) had you managed to speak to a mother or actually find any research on treatment for such a condition- oh yes remembering how fictious this condition is...you can beg to have the case heard in a Criminal Court...where actual evidence is required...you can beg to undergo a lie-detector...but NO the more you protest your innocience ...its part of the so-called condition...to make everyone believe you...so instead of having child adopted..you just agree with anything that is said.....' if you admit to it..we can help you'....so you go along with the therapy...just repeating back to them what they want to hear.
WOW.....cured .... and after 6 long years of fighting for contact visits...then unsupervised stay overs...Finally have my child back in my life....time goes on....the hurt and pain of the injustice is buried deep...ever hopeful that I will have my day in court....
I can only seem to find case studies that say...there is no cure...true suffers of this condition..never admit it...
No Shit Sherlock.....z

July 29, 2009 - 2:44pm
EmpowHER Guest
Anonymous

Its also used against spouse's in divorce.
I do want my tomb stone to read those that killed me, by medical neglect.
As they could not hang me in a public square, also once caught, did not want to treat a sick child, when they found what I had been requesting for doctors to for , no less then two years, A BLOOD TEST.
They sent her to one doctor after another, all treating the symptoms of a disorder, calling it other things, they went so far as wanting to do . THAT was ENOUGH. I demanded that simple blood test. WHO has the Munch, or need for billing? Once the test results came back, and the wicked mother was right, and how could a parent know what is wrong with ones own children?
They see them for 7 min's or less. AS I watch the drugs pile up from one thing after another, ( not giving them, knowing that was not the problem)
The test results went missing, they tried to bury them, Also unaware how one can also cause an autoimmune disorder? that was staring no less then 8 doctors in the face.
I then had MSB. and why? the pead, had sent all the others that mom thinks it this, and thats 'Highly highly unlikely” its common!
They felt embrassed, and called child services to have our child removes? I should have called the police, although they run them too. Then made sure we did not have a doctor. AND we paid for no service and damage that cannot be undone to our child, because ego and not listening to us, or the child. who was not an infant or toddler, but in middle school. I felt like sending them the legal bills, the cost of having to pay for out of country non covered care, the service we now pay, as it was not treated in time, to stop other problems and will now she will have more problems, OVER A SIMPLE WHAT COULD YOU KNOW? They spent god knows how much doing invasive testing with us asking them TO STOP

HOW could this be MSB? YES without question, it was to cover up for medical morons.
and mistakes.
AND I too was then slandered with it, and also sick and it killed me, never trusted a doctor again.

I am so mad reading this.
IF and ONLY IF a parent a teacher a doctor harms a child for any reason, THAT should be heard in a criminal court. Further the doctors should have been charged, for calling in child services when they needed to be reported, we cannot here, they are mandated. Mandated? to frame parents?
harm children?

June 22, 2009 - 1:12pm
EmpowHER Guest
Anonymous

This is good new to have this site up, so many mother have been abused because of this rubblish, given the support of the corrupt family court and the corrupt social workers all working for a common purpose. We saw what these doctors did to Sally Clark and her babies, wicked and evil.
Go to the name and shame social worker blog

June 22, 2009 - 7:39am
EmpowHER Guest
Anonymous

eeeks. how true.
I think I have only days, maybe a week or two, my GP refused to hand over my medical records to PAY for my own health care, at St. Elsewhere. Even as other M.D.s know its against the law to withhold them. BUT they have a peer reveiw sham.
Our childs as well. SHE must have never read them, but for the RED Flag.

I called the press. and a lawyer, who knows?

I have requested Political asylum to Iran, although never a citzen I would know at least where I stand.
The UK. USA, Canada. N.Z Australia !
Why Is The Developed World Obese?
Criminals eat the young. Yours mine and everyone else's. of course in Canada if your a gay couple or single you can have a family. ( not a homophob)
its just turned mad. Neuro toxic chemicals? hospitals are full of them, what is the LD 50 on air?
your water, the chemicals in use in hospitals may be having an effect on them. YET look at infants cord blood?

The M.Ds do with all sincerity, seem sick. They are KILLING each others patients for sport, when angry with one another. I have been asking those that call me to cry over it, if they mind that I record, and the don't. So off went a box of tapes went.

We have high increase rates of infant mortality rate's in all 5 Country's. SO they are stealing children from Africa, as the Genocide on natural families grow.
The project on children from China has failed, they are aging out of parents that adopted them, leaving Canada to look for Roots of Origin.
It made headlines, and SICK to the heart, as I read it.
Social Experiment Chinese Adopted children, now young adults returning home!

WE should all just exchange infants at birth, allow the social workers, lawyers and family courts to cash in, I will raise yours, you will raise mine. and so on.

There is a great deal of press in Canada on the total mess of child protection, with more dying in so called care , then in parents.
can be found at links below. AND also a great deal of the non MSbP.

HANG on mothers. or meet me in Iran.

I think its time we marched on the streets, a day to end the mother of all murders

prejudice care, for profit and protection, and not of the children. MSbP FII, and what ever name they will next change it to.abnormal illness behaviour? WHATS normal. dancing with glee. as we all know MSbP is either or. OH we all have cancer, THANK you, I will bring all dinner and come bearing gifts like the pharm reps do. AFTER ALL IF doctors are now all crying the blues, stating when ever another drug they gave killed millionsthey influenced by pharmaceutical reps/ used car salesmen. WHAT on earth do they know about real human behaviour? The gave up so many years for us. Dare I ever tell them. I went to school too, I had one screaming for my C.V.
A mother crying after the loss of a new born is also charted as not able to cope!
It does make me worry about what they are doing to own children.
They so out of date. IT has become a total mess here.
See you in Iran, you will have more rights, and always know what they are.
We have none anywhere else, but the general public does not understand it.
GO public, advocate, work for the defence, and your done. If they could not steal your children, behead them. its all right out of a book on terror tatics. and called legal.
Have fun. AND SOMEONE better re write this garbage of MSbP. Or be taken to court, there is enough info out there, this was more them misguided, not in formed. It painful.
http://www.fixcas.com/news/now/news.htm

National Post, Friday, June 12, 2009

Children's Aid Society workers should be reined in, critics say

Kevin Libin, National Post

http://www.examiner.com/x-12866-Domestic-Violence-Examiner~y2009m6d21-Readers-detail-ugly-side-of-Canadian-childprotection-agencies

June 22, 2009 - 6:25am
EmpowHER Guest
Anonymous

It is like the Witch Trials of the middle ages, where the women were set up and deemed witches in secret courts to get rid of them and get their property, as they were living too long.

Now it is the turn to try and destroy the mother aspect of the Goddess.

Use the womb man for her womb, grab the baby and use and abuse it, as long as money is made.

This patriarchal society will use any living soul it can to make money and gain power along the way.

This Dr Sturge, her name comes up in a lot of cases.

She is the one who deems violent and sexual predators suitable to get custody, and how many children have been murdered on her say so.

It is then, court ordered murder and abuse of human beings.

Time to arrest the real criminals and introduce Nurenburg 2.

June 22, 2009 - 4:50am
EmpowHER Guest
Anonymous

I think I will name and shame an expert on here Dr Claire Sturge wrote in a fax before ever reading my medical notes or me having turned up and met her for a report for court. She is being investigated by the GMC , the other doctor Dr Wilkins has had 1 warning for doing reports without meeting the woman Miss P.

This is how good a reputation these experts have, they can label you with "intent "before they have met you or read your notes. Or in other words invite the other independent expert to join in the fishing trip for a personality disorder.
For anyone wanting to see this fax send me a e-mail it is up on my blog with all the fob off letters from various MP's and Caffcass who have shredded the file. It was never put before the court . It is disclosed on my blog scroll way down to find it .4th August 2004 to Patrick Persuko child's solicitor who is now a judge in Milton Keynes.
It reads I will be looking at her stomatoise disorder or abnormal illness behaviour... I presume Dr Wilkins is doing likewise?
They had to break the law first before they could sever the maternal bond between us.
I think this has failed as recently I saw a glimpse of my son , who was so delighted to see me.
What part of MSBP can you link to cancer ?
The doctor must be doing a paper on vulnerable people in society .
This is do able in secret court .
The paperwork is all over the internet as it went out using the Clayton ruling for legal advise.
If it goes the course for intent it should set a precedence in law they are using the Meddows case law to pull the reports from court it could even go public.

June 22, 2009 - 4:08am
EmpowHER Guest
Anonymous

Michele , if I be dare be honest now my own health has suffered. I have rubber stamped on my medical notes stomatoise disorder, or abnormal illness behaviour. This is quiet dangerous to have as a label if you also have a history of incurable bowel disease and need to be treated as an acute patient. I by passed the GP and walked into the emergency department of the A&E , I needed surgery for frozen shoulder, the consultant said to me why did you not mention this at the start of the history ? I wanted to reply because I have been accused in closed court of being a hypochondriac ,told I do not have this. I was given emergency surgery for my quality of life.
Due to the stress of the case also the living bereavement from my son for 4 years now I have ongoing problems with my eye sight- high pressure readings also low lipids .
Clearly most of the mothers I know and keep in touch with tell me it is legal court abuse syndrome.Some also refer to muscle wasting away ......

I can see now why Sally Clark died , you are like dead women walking it is just a case of what day we go .
Well hopefully I won't go until I get justice and a global data base for missing children to find a stem cell donor if they are acutely ill.
If left to the Authorities they will not be able to find a donor quick enough.

Probate and a will or a business for letting children/adults they have another option available than the corrupt and measly effort to have control similar to the UK data bases.
We know people on the inside who say they look for these children and they are long gone out of the country .
So if they get ill , how do they find the their biological parent after a case of maladministration?

June 22, 2009 - 3:46am
EmpowHER Guest
Anonymous

"Yesterday, I visited a living skeleton, denied medical care because she helped people like me"
Hello I'm the hanging on skeleton,
unsure how to respond . Without question I would help anyone in need, after all I went to school to do no harm!
There are few of you I know by your post. For whats its worth, I know the injury as well. DO NOT FEAR them.
Move forward, do not let it do what is has done to me, and others, this I is why I help people like you. That would also mean my efforts had not be in vain.
Yes denied medical care, for taking your cases to court's and press.

I too once found query MSbP upon our childs medical chart. Let the games begin, it was not fun.

I hope some fool will one day write, MSB, by ESP. as this child became ill at school, after serious allergic reaction I was not there, a few more allergic reactions at school , IT was now my fault?
Peanut allergies, or other, I found on medical records UNKNOWN TO US, and FII another CYA fill in for MSB
. So is an environmental chemical exposures to children, CCA wood is removed from the market a( billion dollar product at that) also MSB? I took it on. I do not like to see any child harmed.
I did so to protect children and the ground water. WHAT a crime!
Was that what made me a target? as no one was to know about arsenic treated wood, till child risk studies done by government, came out, after years of delay, and not till the product was removed from the market.

I was the WORST MUNCH MOM, also a Medusa the doctor had ever meet,now framed on my wall. ( my hair never looks that bad!), after requesting, to read the medical chart, That to is settled law in this Canada,and your right, however it makes doctors concerned!
Eight long months of children protection looking to build a case, was hard on the pocket book, and nerves, and then another call, after a move, all the medical history that followed on a sick child, and mother ,was a Child protection teams babble on MSbP. YES who indeed needed protection? the school, the indusrty, the doctors? NO the insurance companies, and nor am I litigious they had nothing to fear.
They did not remove the child, no separation test, I had her labs. The separation was also where the allergic reaction's occured I do not have ESP, nor can I bend spoons with my mind. now if I could, some others might have felt our childs pain, and my own. OOPS .

Although the doctors kept trying, this MSbP story, soon the child protection social workers, also caught on, this was cover, and I too knew to much
as well, we seem to all find that wrote on med files, true as posted above. Education is a curse if your a mother with a sick child.
CAN you say belly button, or navel in front of a doctor, use belly button.
.
I advocate, for anyone family at risk, if I can, and make NO mistake I DO NOT CONDONE Child Abuse either.
40 or more cases on MSB alone. ITs most often medical error, drug rections, or now into the public education systems, parents advocating for a child in need of special education and related services, sometimes requesting to read a chart, a lab report, or as another post stated, questions, and almost always about vaccines at this time.

Cyra Miles. with all due respect THIS DOES NOT belong in anything to do with womens health!
Its kills both women and children, as someone else also posted.
ENPOWEAR her, that is dangerous as many mother have found out, be aware when advocating for a sick child, if your a mother.
start reading Cyra and try again.
Start with David Southall, Roy Meadow, and of course read the Hiterlands of child abuse, where are they now? NO witness. ever came forward? and if you excuse me please he shredded it all?
WHO puts papers in a dust bin that had one knighted ?

Is Munchausen Proxy's Roy Meadow the Jayson Blair of Medical Journals?
"Clearly Roy Meadow was not hounded by Lancet's editor in 1977, and too few since, about the lack of scientific methodology, research approval or consent, peer reviewed findings, presumably available in his now "shredded" notes." By Barbara Bryan
http://www.expertclick.com/NewsReleaseWire/ReleaseDetails.aspx?ID=10089&CFID=27156673&CFTOKEN=35170683
http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2008/06/jayson-blair-and-sir-roy-williams.html
an Inquest In Ontario, Canada, all coroners and doctors, told to think dirty no more, also as posted above, just as we paid that inquest, are taxes will fund the settlements , of injured family memeber that spent years in prison, lost children to adoption, no settlements will ever heal them although. The more then misguided doctors walked away to move on else where, and do the SAME HARM. Add SBS? to that mix.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1126481
http://www.psychology-law.com/publicat.htm
Eric Mart above. "One of the finest, most erudite pieces of scholarship and clear thinking I have yet to read, Dr. Mart's treatise explodes the myths of faulty reasoning and pseudoscience underlying the MSBP construct. His masterful and elevating exposé fully embraces the scientific heart of advanced differential diagnosis and shines a lasered beacon for directing competent investigations of purported abuse phenomena. 'Unenlightened expertise' will topple in the wake of this masterful work."

Kirk Witherspoon, Ph.D., Forensic & Clinical Psychologist
Moline, Illinois

http://www.oztoxics.org/ntn/munch.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1258532.stm
Wednesday, 4 April, 2001, 12:35 GMT 13:35 UK
Autism parents hit by abuse claims

"Doctors and social workers are mistaking genuine symptoms of autism for signs of parental abuse, claim researchers.
Many parents are told they may have Munchausen's Disease by Proxy - the condition in which a parent may invent fictitious illnesses for a child, or even harm them, to draw attention to themselves - it is claimed.

The suggestion has outraged autism campaigners, who say that too many parents are being wrongly labelled as abusers"

ENPOWER HER? womens Health, Do you know this has harmed womens health?
childrens health? I too am left very ill, for daring to advocate for others,
as women, mother, with public health concerns, child advoate, scientist, with a social conscience.
Charles Pragnell. well said, I agree.

Michele Lafantaisie.

June 22, 2009 - 1:11am
EmpowHER Guest
Anonymous

I was suspected of carrying this mysterious disease.
I became exposed when my infant son died in my home at seven weeks old. My husband and I experienced the loss of two previous pregnancies to Potters syndrome and IUD. Our Pregnancy was monitored very closely. Yet on the last ultrasound our son was seen strangeling on his umbilical cord. The tecnician even drew pictures of my child strangeling in utero. I was sent home. I gave birth the next day to a beautiful little boy who had the unbilical cord wraped around his neck 2X. My son was declared the picture of health, with high apgars. Yet inexplicably, At 6 hours old, his lungs collapsed and he developed serious complications. He spent two weeks in neonatal intensive care. We brought him home. Fell in love, and found him dead in bed four weeks later.
Our home became a crime scene, our lives an open book, published for all to see. A fairy tale where I became a witch, and my husband a troll under my spell. We meet with investigators from police, coroners, Cas. We specifically advised that something had been overlooked at the hospital. We requested that the final tests review all of our pregnancies, and give us an answer. We specifically requested that these tests be completed outside of the hospital system that may have a vested interest in the final results.
Our surviving children were stolen from our home six months later. I was pregnant. Our new born son developed all the same complications, within the same time frames despite the fact that he was delivered by emergancy C-Section and delivered into the hands of the CAS. We were never allowed to hold him. Yet, inexplicably we continued to be suspect.
It turns out that some "Professional" had contaminated a autopsy sample, and we have a documented family history of serious vaccine reactions due to an undiagnosed inborn error of metabolisim. I wouldnt have believed it myself. But how do you explain, the mother of these babies had a menningitis within two weeks of 15 month shot, adrenal damage at 16 years old from Tb shot, Gullian Barre/possible M.S. at 36 within weeks of Tb shot? Maternal brother at 6 years old and aunt at 30 both post vaccine Paralytic Gullian barre, no one ever told us GB was a vaccine injury.
Upon further study of our case we found that the doctor that treated/diagnosed all of our pregancies at this hospital was a member of the death review committee. In english, this man treated and diagnosed his patient, MY SON. Then he sat on his own patients (My sons) death review, ultimately the finding was a chemical they cant explain. Formic acid and methanol. On the table at autopsy, Formalin a.k.a. formic acid and methanol. This same individual sits on our College of Physicians discipline committee, and teaches ethics! So where were we supposed to go?
When I confronted my sons pediatrician, with documented proof From "Pediatrix" of the inborn error that runs in our family, the positive test results on our son that passed away, and the fact that he would likely kill my child if he continue to vaccinate him, and my concerns about the "treatment" we received, he placed a call. His DX..possible MSBP I have held my son in my arms as his eyes rolled back into his head and his legs jerked, the nurse running for the doctor in the CAS employ, my family have seen the waves of brain eratically jumping, his heart stop beating on their machines and the reports that later said "normal".
Yesterday, I visited a living skeleton, denied medical care because she helped people like me.
A comon treatable illness has reduced her to something, something I am so afraid of. My future.
Because we stood up to THEM. We called THEM out on facts they missed. I work in health care, I know death when I see it. I know that the Forensic Scientist, that made a case against my family, is the same one who will attend this womans home. My heart bleeds for this survivor of terrors unknown, I am too afraid to help, too afraid to walk away. So, I close the door on her skeletal remains with a heart still beating, knowing that if I touch her, or bring her a simple Tim Hortons tea, they will destroy me..oh what fun the criminals in their labs will have..Everyone she knows, has a shadow of doubt cast upon them..so who is left to help? None of us can.
With an accusation of MSBP, you will never be allowed to live free.
MSBP is a diagnosis of medical murder for hire, the accused and their children are dying for it, in droves that eqaul the black plague.
I recently read that our local childrens hospital received multiple millions to combine family health with research, in addition to activating a very old nuclear reactor, to promote western health!
And I am a nut? Did our Dr Death approve the ethics? Will he sit the reviews of the dead parents and their kids?

June 20, 2009 - 5:07pm
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