Munchausen Syndrome essays

Munchausen Syndrome essays A middle aged woman complaining of an abnormally high fever; a thirty-something blue collar worker having multiple seizures a day; a college student mysteriously contracting infection after infection. Is this a medical mystery, or are the patients intentionally harming themselves for the attention that their illness gives them? Strangely enough, many patients either feign their condition or infect themselves with disease in order to attract medical attention. How is this psychological illness different than hypochondria? With the condition known as hypochondria, people experience physical symptoms of illnesses, and find themselves frequenting doctors offices, believing that they are truly sick. However, in Munchausen syndrome, the sufferer knows that he or she is not ill at all, but seeks medical attention in order to gain attention he/she feels cannot be gained in any other manner. In some cases of Munchausen syndrome, the sufferer will even inflict harm upon him/herself in order to make become sick or hurt in such a way that medical attention is required. Widely misunderstood even by health professionals, factitious disorders must be considered in a modern perspective instead of the historical view, which erroneously groups all factitial patients under one extreme category. The term Munchausen Syndrome was introduced by Dr. Richard Asher in 1951 in a paper he wrote for the British medical journal, Lancet. Dr. Asher described this illness as a common syndrome which most doctors have seen, but about which little has been written. Like the famous Baron von Munchausen, the persons affected have always traveled widely; and their stories, like those attributed to him, are both dramatic and untruthful. Accordingly, the syndrome is respectfully dedicated to the baron, and named after him. Munchausen Syndrome is actually a misnomer. Baron Karl Friedrich Hieronymus von Munchausen (1720-1791) was actually an ...