Why Would a Mother Kill Her Own Child?

Tweet

Have you ever heard of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy? Aside from my regular work, I am also a freelance writer. Okay, its just a fancy name for writing for lazy people to earn extra income, and I mean real extra income, because I hardly consider MyLotting as an income-generating activity. There were times though that I don't need extra income but I still do freelance writing because I learn new information since I have to research on what I write about. Last week I was asked to write about Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy and I was horrified by what I learned. Munchausen Syndrome was named after a 17th century German Baron Munchausen who exaggerated his exploits in order to sustain the interest of his audience. Applied in the field of medicine, it is an illness wherein the patient tries to catch the attention of the doctor by fabricating symptoms, sometimes inducing them, that would subject the patient to numerous tests and treatments because the symptoms would often lead to indeterminate diagnoses. Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSBP) means inducing the symptoms on others, usually by a parent on a child, that would result in frequent visits to the doctor as the latter tries to make sense of the child's condition. In MSBP cases, the parent (usually a mother) appears to be very much hands-on, short of obsessed, in caring for the child. There are a few explanations why mothers do this, but one reason is because she enjoys the attention that she's getting as she projects herself as a doting mom to a sick child -- in a recent case where the child died, the mother even blogged about her son's "journey." There is much controversy on whether it is a psychiatric illness or a mere case of child abuse since in many cases the mother would deliberately do something to make her child sick and agree to even subjecting her child to painful diagnostic procedures and treatments. In one supposed case of apnea, the mother was caught by a surveillance video smothering her child until she stopped breathing. But there were also cases where the doctors were quick to raise MSBP when they find the mother annoying because they'd argue with the doctors on the proper treatment of the child. What is alarming is that MSBP is actually more common than what many may think. Worse, it is really difficult to detect that many times the child had to die before it was found out that the mother is afflicted with the disease. I don't know why I'm writing a long article about this. Maybe I just find it very disturbing that I can't get it out of my mind and I feel that I had to share it with you.