The Munchhausen syndrom is (simply speaking) when a person plays to be ill in order to get attention and sympathy. The Munchhausen syndrom by proxy is when e.g. parents manipulate medical history of their child simulate or exaggerates or induces health problems of their child by manipulating probes, lying about the medical history and giving damaging drugs. In 1977, the Munchhausen syndrom by proxy was quite unknown. Roy Meadow describes two cases of this form from child abuse and wonders that these cases “ [have] not been described in the medical literature.” The first case he describes is the little girl Kay. When she was 8 month old, urine infection was supposed the first time. Since then her life was full of antibiotics and “innumerable investigations and anaesthetic, surgical, and radiological procedures in three different [health care] centres.” Her mother which had had urinary-tract infections before, was a really caring and loving mother. However, later it was proven that she manipulated the urine probes of herself and the ones of her daughter. Maybe she did it because “she sometimes felt that her husband was more interested in the child than in her”. However, the brother of Kay was always healthy and no victim of the disordered psych of his mother. Fact is, as soon as the hospital controlled the contact between Kay and her mother, Kay was healthy again. So the story has a happy end. No happy end can be found in the second case of the Munchhausen syndrom by proxy which is described in Roy Meadow’s paper. Charles medical history began when he was 6 weeks old. He had attacks of vomiting and drowsiness. It was soon clear that his sodium concentration were too high but nobody was able to find out why this happened, especially as between the attacks he was normal and healthy. “By the age of 14 month it became clear that [the attacks] only happened at home” and that “the illness must be caused by sodium administration”. While he was in hospital no attacks occurred until the weekend when the mother visited her child. Unfortunately, this detection came too late. “During the period in which the local paediatrician, psychiatrist,and social services department were planning arrangements for the child”, Charles had to go to the hospital again and this time he died after he collapsed because of the extreme high sodium level in his blood. After this story I don’t feel like discussing Munchhausen sydrom and Munchhausen syndrom by proxy in a serious scientific manner. So let’s just sum up: we have to be aware that there is the possibility that the health status of a child is manipulated by its parents, even if the parents are friendly and lovely. That doesn’t mean that parents should not be asked for useful hints and that parents shouldn’t be allowed to visit their child in the hospital. Like Roy Meadow wrote: “We may teach, and I believe should teach, that mothers are always right; but at the same time we must recognise that when mothers are wrong they can be terribly wrong.” R.I.P. Charles "Munchausen syndrome by proxy: the hinterland of child abuse."
Roy Meadow The Lancet 310.8033 (1977): 343-345.
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IdeaI love to increase my general science knowledge by reading papers from different fields of science. Here I share some of them. Archiv
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