"Do you sometimes want to be sick too? Or when you want the symptoms of your existing disease to get worse? Have you ever pretended to be sick when you weren't? The discomfort experienced by these people is defined as Munchausen Syndrome. If you answer yes to these questions, let's examine Munchausen Syndrome together.”
Munchausen Syndrome, which is seen in people who do not have any disease but apply to the doctor as if they are sick and insist on their disease, is a very difficult and It is a psychological disorder that requires careful examination. The person, by imitating the disease he has determined, applies to many hospitals as if he is sick, and in some cases, he may even engage in self-harming behaviors in order to convince the officials that he is sick. These behaviors may manifest themselves in the clinical picture as injuring himself, playing with the thermometer to increase his body temperature, applying methods to increase the symptoms of the disease if he has an existing disease in the process, and playing on the test results. These people's stories are mostly full of lies, they have a fiction about the disease that has been successfully processed to deceive the other person, no matter how good an observer he is. When the fictions about the disease are not processed, the patient may leave the hospital without getting any results, or may apply to different hospitals repeatedly with a similar story, and may even use different names when appropriate. Bleeding disorder due to vitamin deficiency, false fever, skin injuries, infections, recurrent abdominal pain, vomiting, joint pain are the most common reasons for hospital admission.
People with Munchausen Syndrome often have severe affective disorders, histrionic personality traits, and one or more substance addictions. Many reasons such as the presence of antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, long-term health problems in childhood or adolescence, caregiver's negligent attitude or abandonment, economic situation, problems in the family can support Munchausen Syndrome and cause Munchausen Syndrome in the person. found It may cause. In addition to these, low self-esteem, having problems in interpersonal communication, having an intense sense of guilt and having the urge to punish oneself in order to suppress the feeling of guilt can be seen as the reason for the person to take part in clinical pictures that will require surgical operation by acquiring the habit of imitating diseases. Therefore, imitation and lying behaviors seen in people with Munchausen Syndrome do not occur consciously, they are based on unconscious processes.
The treatment process of Munchausen Syndrome is very difficult due to the difficulty of detecting the syndrome. However, if the syndrome is detected and cooperation is established with the person, psychotherapy and cognitive behavioral therapy are the appropriate treatment methods.
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