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"Munchausen syndrome Fiction."
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\"The three Babcock sisters must travel to a Mexican clinic across the border so their mother, ill with leukemia, can receive alternative treatments. The sisters' world is about to shatter under the weight of an incomprehensible betrayal. . . an illness far more insidious than cancer that poisons their home\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Feeling bad but looking good : Sick role features that lead to favorable interpersonal judgments
Despite the presumed stigma of medical illnesses and injuries, persons with factitious disorder (FD) actively work to occupy the role of medical patient. They do so for reasons that are distinctly psychological, not for any obvious instrumental benefits. There is little empirical evidence that addresses the psychological benefits that accrue from the sick role. The self-enhancement model of factitious illness behavior suggests that the psychological benefits of the sick role might include protection or enhancement of the patient's self-esteem or self-image. Specifically, the model suggests that the sick role can be self-enhancing by (a) serving as a vehicle for the accumulation and display of prized medical knowledge, (b) providing the patient with a sense of uniqueness, and (c) providing vicarious self-esteem by bringing the patient in contact with prestigious physicians. We tested the self-presentational value of these sick role features by asking participants to provide interpersonal judgments of a fictitious medical patient. Participants made significantly more favorable judgments of the patient when the patient was described as medically knowledgeable, and when the patient had a unique, as opposed to a common, medical problem. No evidence was found to support the hypothesis that patients are seen more positively through their association with prestigious physicians. These results provide preliminary support for an important assumption of the self-enhancement model, namely that the sickrole, oral least certain enactments of the sick-role, can have positive self-presentational outcomes.
Journal Article
On the borderline?: Borderline Personality Disorder and Deliberate Self Harm in literature. Paper in: Mental Health: Diffuse, Confuse and Refuse. Palmer, Victoria J. (ed.).
This article examines Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) in two texts - Kristen Waterfield Duisberg's (1993) The Good Patient and Susana Kaysen's (2003) Girl, Interrupted. It argues that fiction that examines the types of behaviours associated with BPD depathologises BPD through its focus on experience, meaning and reasons rather than symptom. The label of BPD can be pejorative and as such individuals who have this diagnosis or meet the criteria for it run the risk of having many assumptions made about their acts of Deliberate Self Harm (DSH). From the perspective of the functions, meanings and significations of acts of DSH, this article suggests that learning to listen to these highly individual networks of meanings through the non-damaging medium of literature can be a valuable tool for clinicians. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
Journal Article
Book Reviews: Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy Abuse: A Practical Approach By Eminson, Mary & Postlethwaite, R. J. . Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann. 2000. 321 pp. £27.50 (pb). ISBN 0 75064 072 3
[...]recently, the profession has mostly responded to the challenge of factitious illness by evasion or rejection. [...]as he writes, “In factitious illness… the truth is discoverable only in terms of an account of the fabric of the lives of the participants… the participants, in my view, include the professionals who have been caught up (or out) in the fiction”. [...]does this volume meet the challenge posed by these extraordinary behaviours and the divides they cause, with a challenge, indeed, to health care professionals themselves. [...]in Chapter 14, the effect of these behaviours on health care staff, and ways of management and damage limitation are discussed.
Book Review