A parent whose child is sick would go to great lengths just to nurture him back to health. But there are known cases whereby the parent does otherwise, to the point of setting his child up to get sick and/or aggravate his prevailing condition. Unimaginable as it is to realize that there are parents like this, such actions are done for the sake of getting attention or sympathy. This condition is identified as MBPS (Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome), a rare mental illness that prompts parents or caregivers to inflict one of the most serious forms of child abuse: intentionally making him sick.

What MBPS is about

Mothers are found out to be the usual sufferers of MBPS. Named after Baron von Munchausen, an 18th century German dignitary known for his penchant to tell tall tales, a person with this rare form of mental disorder would intentionally make another person sick, usually a young child in his pre-school years.

To convince doctors and other people of their child’s illness, MBPS patients tend to fabricate or exaggerate a story concerning the latter. In doing so, they may either induce symptoms or exaggerate them. As there are no other witnesses save for the MBPS parent or caregiver and the concerned child, it is only after a specific period of time before medical experts could confirm that the child’s illness has been perpetrated.

Based on some cases, disturbed parents or caregivers who have been abused themselves as a child have been confirmed to have MBPS. They are characterized by their need to have someone else (usually their child or anyone close to them) seen as ill or injured. Never associated with the want for financial gain, such a compulsion is driven by complex emotional problems.

MBPS sufferers may have been raised in either a cold or dysfunctional environment where the only means to get affection and attention is to get sick. Another popular theory about this factitious disorder is that MBPS sufferers are people suffering from depression or anxiety. They may be acting unconsciously by asking help for themselves by means of getting attention through inducing another person’s illness.

How it affects the concerned child

Severe cases have shown MBPS sufferers to perform acts to the concerned child to convince doctors and other people of his illness. These include switching drugs, injecting/applying dirty or foreign substances to cause an infection, and manipulating a wound so it wouldn’t heal. Hence, experts have identified the following conditions which are commonly faked by parents/caregivers with MBPS: inability to cope with a prevailing illness, allergies, infections, vomiting, diarrhea, asthma, and seizures.

The extent of the damage brought on by MBPS sufferers to the child largely depends on the measures taken and the length of time it took before the matter is brought to public attention. Reported extreme cases have led victims to suffer from severe physical and mental damage such as blindness, mental retardation, deleterious skeletal changes, limps, and brain damage. Should the child survive his ordeal and realize the cause of sufferings, he is likely to acquire some psychological problems to a certain degree.

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