A healthy girl whose mother told her to feign sickness received unnecessary medical treatments, including an appendectomy, until a suspecting doctor uncovered the plot.
Pediatricians need to keep an eye open for this rare form of child abuse, said Chiu Nan-chang (
Chiu said the mother of the kindergarten-aged girl had come all the way from central Taiwan to see him.
The mother said the child suffered from symptoms including headaches and stomach pains. The child, meanwhile, played along convincingly.
Chiu, however, saw nothing that might have caused the symptoms and the girl's mother seemed excessively enthusiastic about the diagnosis. Sensing that something was afoot, he arranged for the girl to be hospitalized and kept under observation.
Unbeknownst to the girl and the mother, Chiu asked a patient in the bed next to the girl to report on her condition.
Chui discovered that whenever hospital personnel left the room, the girl would immediately recover and behaved as would any other healthy kid her age.
Further investigation showed that the girl had visited other hospitals, where she received endoscopies and an appendectomy.
After being exposed, the mother quickly left the hospital with her daughter.
Chiu contacted social workers, asking them to intervene so that the girl would not continue to suffer unnecessary medical treatment.
Chiu said that Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome is a rare illness that can be difficult, even for medical professionals, to diagnose.
Children often need parents to describe their symptoms for them, Chiu said, making it difficult for doctors to tell if the child is really suffering.
"The ultimate cause of this kind of child abuse is usually an adult projecting his or her anxieties and family problems onto the child," he said.
In this case, the mother was not getting along with her mother-in-law. For that woman, "hospital browsing" had become a way to get out of the house, Chiu said.
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