Personal Narrative

A woman describes recurrent poisoning, relating it to MBP

"The beginning of the nightmare began when I was just 18 yrs old, a Senior in High School, and dating my future husband. My relationship with my boyfriend, at the time, was pure and innocent, and he invited me to his family member's church, where his brother in law...

Advice for Therapists From a Medical Child Abuse Survivor

To well-meaning therapists, I was a victim of severe medical child abuse, but it has taken me over 20 years to even start to feel anger at my abuser (my mother). Obviously there are a lot of complexities to this kind of abuse and her being my mum, and also her being...

Thoughts from a Munchausen by Proxy survivor

I was raised by a mother with Munchausen’s, MBP, and narcissistic personality disorder. As an infant, she claimed I needed penicillin for “months” until I got anaphylaxis. Throughout my childhood, she had me at the pediatrician nonstop for pneumonia, and would force...

Life with a mother with severe, untreated Munchausen syndrome

My mother has been sick since before I was born, not, however, in the way she has always desired to be sick. Before her children came along, her cat had seizures. Then my older sister had seizures and my mother convinced the pediatrician to write an anti-seizure...

A mixture of Munchausen syndrome and malingering: factitious AIDS

This case is mostly culled from newspaper accounts and is not truly a “personal” narrative. In 2008, Cassey Jo Weierbach was found guilty of welfare fraud, forgery, and records tampering. Pennsylvania state prosecutors accused Cassey of pretending to have AIDS in...

Munchausen syndrome and a cancer hoax

I am convinced that my sister Bernadette is pretending to have terminal cancer. I am angry, upset, and terrified right now. This all started in January, when Bernadette called to tell me that a small tumor had been found on her ovary during a routine scan. She...