There is a category of patients whose diagnostics of disorders causes great difficulties for doctors, since "patients" turn to different specialists, carefully hide their medical history, skillfully lie to doctors, inflict injuries on themselves and at the same time deny simulation in every possible way. After identifying a simulation, doctors are forced to turn to their colleagues in the field of psychiatry.
Munchausen syndrome is one of the varieties of hysteria, a borderline mental disorder that manifests itself in the simulation of various diseases. The first description of this phenomenon was given by the English physician Richard Asher in the middle of the last century. And the syndrome got its name in honor of Baron Munchausen, known for his ability to invent incredible stories.
Causes of Munchausen syndrome
The main reason is the need of the simulator to attract to himself what he lacked in childhood - attention and care. The overwhelming majority of patients grew up in conditions of alienation and inattention on the part of their parents. A person remembers how in childhood he became very ill, and his parents, from being indifferent, suddenly became attentive and caring. But the illness passed, and the parents again stopped paying attention to him. All this contributed to the formation of his thinking pattern - if you want to feel needed and significant, you need to get sick!
Another reason is to improve your self-esteem. Patients try to seek help from well-known doctors, so that later they can boast to others: “It was not someone who treated me, but such and such!”.
After the doctors "calculate" the simulator (and this happens without fail), he has a good reason and indestructible grounds for reproaches in relation to medicine in general, and to specific doctors in particular. He presents himself as a victim of medical arbitrariness, unprofessionalism and negligence.
Patients with Munchausen syndrome are usually educated and well-read people, and could well take a worthy place in society if it were not for their emotional immaturity, infantilism, maladaptive behavior and a riot of fantasy.
Symptoms of Munchausen syndrome
Patients with Munchausen's syndrome are so called "savvy" in the intricacies of the simulated disease. Before contacting a specialist, they literally study the special medical literature and perfectly recreate the clinical picture of the disease.
The choice of a disease for simulation depends on the person's awareness of the disease, the ability to reliably recreate the symptoms, as well as on which doctor is available.
Some universal patterns can be distinguished in the behavior of patients with Munchausen syndrome:
- carefully hide the anamnesis;
- try not to mention the names of the attending physicians in order to avoid exposure;
- prefer to make an appointment last;
- make scandals when mistrust is shown to them;
- try to disappear if exposed.
Features inherent in patients with Munchausen syndrome:
- artistry;
- a penchant for fantasy;
- hysteria;
- infantilism;
- selfishness;
- obsession;
- suspiciousness;
- tendency to masochism;
- resourcefulness.
Diagnosis and treatment of Munchausen syndrome
Patients with Munchausen syndrome very convincingly imitate various diseases, and when they are exposed, they create scandals and refuse psychiatric help. Often they willfully try to leave a medical institution in order to find another specialist.
Treating patients with Munchausen syndrome is not an easy task, requiring constant supervision by a psychiatrist. Sometimes a non-confrontational approach is used, implying an imitation of the patient's treatment with the use of massages and physiotherapy, drug treatment, as a rule, is not used.
