A Podcast described and analysed by Salomé Guitton, Thanh-Ngoc Hoang, Philomène Voisin and Lola Troublé
Mathilde is a young woman who had a daughter a few years ago. The hospital’s context of her pregnancy brought her back to a strange feeling of discomfort about her own childhood. This feeling was reinforced after Mathilde gave birth. Her mother acted suspiciously with her daughter and it brings her to reconsider her past. By immersing herself in her childhood, she discovered a period marked by unceasing medical visits. Caregivers who met Mathilde as a child described her mother as abusive and controlling. She exaggerated her symptoms and took her to see a doctor without valid reasons. This clinical case of Mathilde allows us to illustrate Munchausen syndrom by proxy. It is taken from a podcast where Mathilde tells her story and her mother’s one.
Munchausen syndrom is used to refer to the case of people who invent false stories about their illness. It results in a need to simulate pathologies in order to draw the attention and assistance of others. This term was then applied to a particular form of child abuse in 1977 named “Munchausen syndrom by proxy” (Meadow, 1995). In this syndrom, a parent invents falses illness stories and simulates pathologies about his child. The aim is the same as in Munchausen syndrom because the proxy also tries to inflame empathy on others.
The disorder is characterized by the following criteria. The first one is an intentional production of physical or psychological symptoms on a person who is under the perpetrator’s legal responsibility . In the case of Mathilde, it is her mother who fabricated falses illness to her. In this disease, a child can be directly or indirectly harmed by his parents. He can present a varied and rare symptomatology because of the multiple symptoms simulated by the relatives. This often leads to a massive exploration of the symptoms, which in the end really harm the child’s health. In the end, a therapeutic and diagnostic relentlessness can be observed (Binet, 2001). For example, in Mathilde’s case, when she was young, she had a urinary infection that was treated. But after that, her mother couldn’t stop asking Mathilde if she was still in pain. She would even hit Mathilde’s back to identify where it hurted and if it was still painful. After several years of insisting to the doctors and sowing confusion, Mathilde’s mother succeeded in getting her daughter to have an operation to remove one of her kidneys. Another criteria for this syndrome is the parents’ difficulty to separate from their child. When Mathilde decided to distance herself from her mother, the latter threatened to go to court to assert her grandparents rights. Mathilde’s mother went secretly to the nursery where her granddaughter was to see her without her daughter’s authorization. Finally, another criteria often noticed is a denial on the part of the parent as to the etiology of the child’s illness (Meadow, 1995). This is what we observe with Mathilde as her mother falsified medical documents but denied it in order to prove that her daughter suffered from a disease.
To conclude about this disorder, let’s note that healthcare professionals struggle to deal with it. Moreover, most caregivers are aware of the invasive nature of the family member and even that the parent suffers from a real pathology. Once Mathilde was an adult, a doctor told her that “her mother wanted to cure her daughter but in reality she was the one who was sick”. This sentence accurately describes this syndrome because the parent tries to make his or her child sick in order to benefit from it, whereas it is the parent who suffers from a mental pathology and not the child. It is very important to inform the medical profession about this disorder which is still poorly known because it is hard to identify and can have disastrous consequences on the child’s life. Today, although Mathilde has a daughter and a husband, she still bears the weight of her mother’s influence. Indeed, her pregnancy was difficult due to the fact that she has only one kidney. Moreover, she is very anxious for her daughter and is afraid for her life. A well known case of Munchausen syndrome by proxy that illustrates the disastrous consequences of this disorder is the one of Gypsy Rose Blanchard. Gypsy’s mother suffered from this syndrome, which led her daughter to kill her to free herself from its grip. This case, like Mathilde’s, illustrates the importance of broadening clinical knowledge about this disorder in order to identify it and thus manage it.
Key Terms : Munchausen syndrom – Child abuse – Legal responsibilities – Psychopathologic Disorder – Physical illness.
Words we have learned :
| Aetiology | Etiologie – The examination of the cause of a phenomenon as a disease. |
| “Loco parentis” | La place des parents – It is a principle of law used in common law countries referring to the legal responsibility of parents for their children. It refers to the obligations and rights of parents with their child |
| Fulfil | Accomplir – To achieve something, realize a task, an objective. |
| Perpetrator | L’auteur/le suspect – The author of an illegal act, a crime. |
| Fanciful | Fantaisiste, imaginaire – Something that refers to the imaginary, that comes out of reality. |
Bibliography:
- Binet, É. (2001). Le Syndrome de Münchhausen Par Procuration : Une nouvelle forme de dysparentalité transgénérationnelle. Devenir, 13, 29-39. https://doi.org/10.3917/dev.012.0029
- Koskievic, S. (Spotify). (2022, august 25). Poser des limites. In Transfert Podcast. https://open.spotify.com/episode/3y3t5ByZlBRifSZvA4hNeT?si=Aps8d18VTXCHs4mA8GXB0g
- Meadow, R (1995). What is, and what is not, ‘Munchausen syndrome by proxy’?. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 72(6), 534–538. doi:10.1136/adc.72.6.534
- Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard. (2022, 11 december). Wikipédia. Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard – Wikipedia