Munchausen By Proxy Essay

Psychology Paper #2: Factitious disorders and Munchausen by Proxy With Mother’s Day around the corner, store shelves will be lined with cards honoring the care and nurturing mothers are known for. Children everywhere will be thanking their mothers for nursing them to health when they were sick, putting bandages on skinned knees and always keeping them safe. What if your mother was the one who made you sick? That’s the reality when a person has Munchausen by proxy. Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy is a psychological disorder where a caregiver, usually a child’s mother, fabricates a child’s illness to gain attention. This paper will define Munchausen by Proxy, give a brief history, explain the controversial reasons on why it happens, and discuss some famous cases. Munchausen by Proxy is often interchangeable with factitious disorder, but Munchausen by Proxy is a specific factitious disorder. A factitious disorder is characterized by purposely creating physical or psychological

Due to the disorder being hard to diagnose many of the victims die before the disorder is noticed. It is estimated that approximately 10 percent of victims of Munchausen syndrome by proxy die (Valentine). One of the most famous cases was that of Marybeth Tinning. Between 1972- 1981, seven of Marybeth Tinning’s children had died of various mysterious illnesses, from Pulmonary Edema to SIDS to Acute Meningitis. The staff at Ellis Hospital had labeled the family cursed with the “Death Gene” (Fisher). Police had been suspicious of Marybeth Tinning but didn’t start to look closer until the death of her eight child, who died of strangulation. They finally took Marybeth into interrogation, where she cracked under the pressure and admitted she had killed three of the eight children. The jurors agreed that she had killed her eighth child for the attention and she was sentenced to life in prison without parole