Munchausen Syndrome, A Simple Guide To The Condition, Diagnosis, Treatment And Related Conditions

This book describes Munchausen Syndrome, Diagnosis and Treatment and Related Diseases Munchausen syndrome is a mental illness featured by three signs: Simulated illness: either physical or psychiatric. Pathological lying (pseudologia fantastica). Wandering from place to place (peregrination): the patient normally presents to numerous different hospitals, using different names. In Munchausen syndrome: Symptoms can be simulated - e.g., contamination of specimens to look like hematuria, hemoptysis, hematemesis. A pre-existing illness can be exaggerated. Disease may even be self-induced - e.g., eating contaminated food to cause food poisoning. People with Munchausen syndrome may go through unnecessary tests, operations, or uncomfortable investigations and procedures. They can cause themselves considerable injury. Costs sustained to health services for these repeated admissions and procedures can be huge. There is a related disorder known as Munchausen syndrome by proxy in which a parent or caregiver produces factitious illness in a child or adult in their care. The caregiver of a child, most often a mother, either creates fake symptoms or produces real symptoms to make it look like the child is sick. Causes No one knows what causes Munchausen syndrome The patients: Have suffered abuse or neglect as a child. The hospital is seen as a safe environment or a way to escape from everyday life. Be trying to understand or cope with earlier serious illness by reliving the experience. Be identifying with someone close who had a serious illness. Have a very low self-image. Have an inability to trust authority figures, such as doctors. Symptoms Feigning surgical illness and hoping for a laparotomy Bleeding shockingly Presenting with curious fits Presenting with false heart attacks…