As
background to the following discussion, please see: http://tinyurl.com/k75vy
I am
saddened, profoundly saddened, that Munchausen
Syndrome by Proxy (MSBP) has been "discredited" because of the cases
of medical practitioners who allegedly misused the diagnosis.
I do not
know why Sir Roy Meadow has been discredited personally and instead of being
called the discoverer of this syndrome is being slurred as "the inventor
of this label/diagnosis". I think he should be hailed for having given a
name to a phenomenon that, without being named, is very difficult to recognize
as a syndrome of child abuse.
Almost 25
years ago I befriended a woman who had one daughter at the time, or rather, she
befriended me - desperately. She was a
needy and dependent personality, but I was new in
Her
daughter, whom I loved, was a "sickly" child and she was always
attentively attending to the girl's various, rather obscure and oddly symptomless, illnesses.
At first I thought this woman a very dedicated and concerned mother.
After a while I began to see that something was amiss, but I did not know how to
define what exactly. I began to joke with her that she a hypochondriac for her
daughter. Her husband did not smile when
I made these jokes.
After a few
years she has a boy, then another child...five in all.
All of her
children were "sickly". Their obviously imaginary illnesses ran the
gamut from the mild cold to chronic illnesses and emergency medical conditions
that required immediate attention. She
was constantly running with them from one health clinic to another (perhaps as
they caught on to her she moved on?) and calling ambulances in the middle of
the night. There was no name for what she was doing to her children in those
days and all I ever heard of was plain old vanilla hypochondria. Evidently,
that was also the case with the child welfare workers too. Israel has excellent child welfare mechanisms
in place for rescuing children at risk, but no one had a name for this type of
personality disorder and child abuse at the time.
The last
time I saw her she invited me over to her place. We were living in different
cities at the time. When I got there no one was at home. I spotted a pharmacy across
the street. I walked over to the
pharmacy and, not at all surprisingly, there she was with the kids. "How did you know where to find me?", she laughed knowing the answer. She was always plying the kids with OTCs and
getting them prescription drugs from unsuspecting doctors and administering
those as well. This time she was buying Flagyl. I knew Flagyl was
dangerous so I opened my mouth and said:
"Flagyl is dangerous (I don't recall that
we knew it is carcinogenic at the time, but we did know that it is risky to
take). Why are you giving the kids Flagyl?" The
little one said: "Mom says I have
worms" and rolled his eyes signaling that he knew he didn't. I choked back
the tears.
I never
went back there. I couldn't. It hurt too much to see what the kids were
going through in that house. She called
me to invite me to the wedding of her oldest, my favorite of her children. I
couldn't attend. Too many memories of
her having been hurt as a child would have flooded my memory. My friend said something unclear about a
social worker helping the family and about the little ones being in boarding
schools. I understood that child welfare
had intervened. I heaved a very deep
sigh of relief.
My
conscience bothers me to this day. Had I
known the words Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, I would have
reported her to the authorities. I would
have demanded that they look into the case if they ignored it for lack of
knowing how to handle it. If they didn't
know what MSBP is, I would have sent them information. I didn't know what MSBP was and those kids
suffered terribly until someone learned about the syndrome and acted on it.
I am filled
with sorrow that MSBP had been "discredited". How typical of the West to throw out the baby
with the bathwater on the lark of a trend. MSBP was probably the
"darling" of the psychological world at one time. Now it's the ugly stepdaughter. How typical. Dammit!
I am
certain that more children will suffer because of real MSBP than due to medical
malpractice using MSBP as a cover.
Doreen
Ellen Bell-Dotan,