Beware of overdiagnosis of Munchausen by Proxy
Lehigh County, Pa., is on fire right now with the outrage of at least 70 families who are on a mission to have Dr. Debra Esernio-Jenssen, a “child abuse pediatrician,” fired from Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN) and hopefully brought up on criminal charges. The families allege that Dr. Jenssen diagnosed all of them with the controversial “Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy” and accused them of child abuse when they brought their children into LVHN for various reasons.
This doesn’t surprise me, because I dealt with a similar case long ago. It was a single case, not a group, but I felt a parent with a sick child had been falsely accused. Fortunately, a medical diagnosis was finally made. But it was touch and go for a while.
I do think that Munchausen’s by Proxy exists, but it is very rare. If any doctor is seeing 70 such cases (or even as many as five), it should be a red flag – on the doctor.
I do think that Munchausen’s by Proxy exists, but it is very rare.
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Don’t believe it is ‘very rare’.
Art Deco:
I suppose it depends on your definition of “very rare.” It is a great deal more rare than that doctor seems to think.
I actually know quite a bit about it, since I had to deal with it and learn about it in depth.
MHBP It is in the news a lot right now because of the documentary on Maya Kowalski, and her current lawsuit, which reminded me of Justine Pelletier. Both children and their families were virtually tortured because doctors refused to believe a rare medical diagnosis (that both girls had already received) and insisted the parents suffered from MHBP.
It is terrible when it is real, but that there are doctors who are convinced that parents with children with rare illnesses have it, is worse. I have always heard that medical students are taught, “When you hear hoofbeats, think ‘horses,’ not ‘zebras.'” But I think the unfortunate outcome of that is that too many doctors refuse to consider the possibility that the metaphorical hoofbeats might be belong to zebras.
And MHBP is more a ‘horse’ than some disease that children may be suffering from.
(Or adults. A 50-year-old relative of mine took months to get a proper diagnosis because they always assumed he was drunk. He had to have three other relatives accompany him, and swear up and down that he had not had any alcohol in MONTHS, if not YEARS. He is now on proper medication and while the prognosis is not good, it is better than it was a week ago.)
“Trust your doctor” had taken a massive hit in the last few.
Most transgender cases in young children are probably really cases of Munchausen-by-Proxy.
FWIW, DSM-5 (2013) changed the name of the disorder from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSbP) to Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another or FDIA. You can read about the new name and criteria here:
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/9834-factitious-disorder-imposed-on-another-fdia
Some British psychiatrists prefer the term Fabricated or Induced Illness by Carers or FII.
It is a great deal more rare than that doctor seems to think.
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I suspect her career is an exercise in socially-sanctioned aggression. Emphasis on the modifier. She ain’t going after the mothers of soi-disant trannies.
Most transgender cases in young children are probably really cases of Munchausen-by-Proxy
Also known as Transhausen-by-Proxy. Sorry, can’t credit whoever coined the term.
In Seattle, it is interesting to note that the parents of a young “trans” child frequently move up in their jobs.
One of the developments on this topic is that the founder of what is called “child abuse pediatrics” refused to get board certified because he objected to the way his defining work was being perverted.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/megan-fox/2023/10/15/founding-father-of-child-abuse-pediatrics-calls-johns-hopkins-all-childrens-defendants-conspirators-in-unlawful-acts-n1735266
I see dumb people.
}}} “Trust your doctor” had taken a massive hit in the last few.
It’s been more than a mere few. They’ve been steadily dis-earning trust for at least two decades. Particularly when they don’t fight the government when it gives them shit for providing pain relief to pain-sufferers, just because SOME of them might be addicts.
Because, you know, innocent people suffering lots of pain are sooooo much less important than stopping peeps from getting high. :-/
Not quite sure how that slots into the Hippocratic Oath…
Cases where parents influence and talk their kids into trans identities are far more common than MBP cases, which however have a different m.o.. I believe it’s an overbroad use of the MBP term to apply it to those cases. Both phenomena are bad, but they are different. The MBP cases begin with the parent manipulating the child physically to cause a fake physical illness and interact with the health care system repeatedly and often. The trans-influencing parent manipulates the child psychologically and socially in order to cause a syndrome that ultimately ends in physical treatment by the health care system.
Most of us have seen moms who strike us as way too hands-on, over protective, and controlling. Doesn’t take much imagination to presume a number of worse cases exist and so skepticism about such reports is not likely.
I saw my “trust your doctor” beliefs taking a dive during my mother’s emergency surgery and the aftermath when her recovery was slow. I could tell the nurses discounted everything I reported on my mom’s condition that I saw deteriorating. As a result, 3 weeks later, she had to have a second, and third emergency surgery that probably wouldn’t have been necessary if they had investigated what I observed. Munchausen by daughter.
I think it has become more existent since the most recent wave of feminism. For the last 45 years, hundreds of thousands of women have won total custody of their children in divorce. They are free to do whatever they damn well please, and what they please is to keep their kids tied to them as closely as possible in an effort to prevent a predictable lifetime of loneliness should the children escape from their “liberated mommy”. At the same time, these women have been told repeatedly that they are courageous leaders of the new world and they must train their children to be obedient to any woman in charge of any thing.
Tie that to a community of highly educated women and you get mothers armed with very sophisticated techniques for taking control.
I also believe that because of the absence of independent outdoor play, a habit which has developed over the past forty years, children have not learned to protect themselves, have become less able to defend themselves, less likely to protest coercion. They are much more easily manipulated, which is what the NOW leadership has wanted from the beginning.