Munchausen by Internet
by Joyce Gemperlein
NOVEMBER 8, 2010 TAGS:
More and more people are bravely dragging themselves from their deathbeds to their keyboards to describe their or a loved one’s slow death and eventual demise.
Or so you’d think.
Actually, the anonymity and lack of accountability of modern technology aids people who, in the olden days of mere telephone and in-person contact, would have had trouble getting attention or weaseling out of a commitment by pretending to be at death’s door.
Dr. Marc Feldman calls this phenomenon “Munchausen by Internet,” a term he coined, which applies to people who go online to fake terminal illness and/or death.
He says the syndrome goes beyond a need for attention to “an undeniable element of sadism,” one that feeds off the concern and outpouring of sympathy from readers, especially those in online support groups for the terminally ill.
His name for the phenomenon is an extension of bona fide chronic condition named after a German baron who told outrageous tales of defying death.
“Munchausen Syndrome” refers to people who make themselves sick to get attention. “Munchausen by Proxy” generally involves a mother who makes her child sick for the same reason. The conditions have often been fodder for television detective and medical dramas and the movie The Sixth Sense.
Although Feldman, an adjunct professor of psychiatry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, discussed Munchausen by Internet in a research paper more than 10 years ago, he says the incidence of the disorder increases steadily due to a rise in social networking and online support groups.
A proliferation of medical websites has also supplied the information needed to concoct faux symptoms associated with real terminal diseases.
“The Internet world is perfect for expanding this type of deception,” says Feldman, who has studied factitious disorders for more than 20 years.
Examples of this type of hoax are plentiful and include the well-known case of “April Rose,” in which a Michigan woman drew the support of conservative Christians when, in 2009, she wrote extensively -- and “beautifully,” according to Feldman -- of carrying a fetus with a terminal disease rather than undergo an abortion.
After attention, apparel and money was sent her way, she posted a picture of herself holding what she said was the dead child. The hoax came to an end after a doll maker in New York recognized the “baby” as a lifelike toy that she herself owned.
In an earlier case in late 2005, an international expression of grief in the online community ended in anger and disbelief after a “confidante” of “limeybean” wrote that she had finally died after bravely detailing for thousands of online sympathizers her struggle with tuberculosis.
The files of chroniclers of such hoaxes -- several websites are devoted to investigating the veracity of online correspondents who contend they are terminally ill – also contain the case of a women who had a “friend” write that she had died when, in truth, the woman did not want to hand over patterns she had promised to members of her online knitting group.
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Feldman, whose book Playing Sick? includes information about the disorder, says mental health practitioners rarely have the chance to probe the psyches of the offenders because, after an often dramatic confrontation online by someone who has found them out, they log off, disappear, or reappear elsewhere as someone with a different terminal illness.
The greatest damage, he says, is to support groups that, in many cases, have rallied behind an individual.
“These groups have sometimes been destroyed as a result of this. They divide into camps of believers and nonbelievers. They fight about the minutiae of posts and, eventually, administrators of the site have to bar further discussion of and condolences to the patient because it has excluded all other discussion,” he says.
In his writings, Feldman describes the case of a woman who claimed to be the sister of a patient with terminal cystic fibrosis. She posted updates until the sister died. After the tale was debunked, the woman admitted that she had made up the story and, he says, ‘actually made fun of support group members for being gullible.”.
Clinicians have had the chance to get inside the minds of other such hoaxsters.
One California woman, through the creation of an online sister, posted her own death in a car accident. She said later that she regretted doing so, but that the outpouring of grief over her “death” made her feel loved.
“Limeybean,” also went online to explain herself in a treatise that in itself was an attention-getter. She apologized to those who
had mourned her and had been grief-stricken by her “death” and the subsequent revelation that they had been hookwinked.
She confessed to another as-yet unnamed disease of the modern age:
“I’ve always had a problem,” she wrote, “when it comes to telling the truth on the internet, to be honest.”
Joyce Gemperlein is a frequent contributor to Obit.
Joyce Gemperlein is a regular contributor to Obit.
Or so you’d think.
Actually, the anonymity and lack of accountability of modern technology aids people who, in the olden days of mere telephone and in-person contact, would have had trouble getting attention or weaseling out of a commitment by pretending to be at death’s door.Dr. Marc Feldman calls this phenomenon “Munchausen by Internet,” a term he coined, which applies to people who go online to fake terminal illness and/or death.
He says the syndrome goes beyond a need for attention to “an undeniable element of sadism,” one that feeds off the concern and outpouring of sympathy from readers, especially those in online support groups for the terminally ill.
His name for the phenomenon is an extension of bona fide chronic condition named after a German baron who told outrageous tales of defying death.
“Munchausen Syndrome” refers to people who make themselves sick to get attention. “Munchausen by Proxy” generally involves a mother who makes her child sick for the same reason. The conditions have often been fodder for television detective and medical dramas and the movie The Sixth Sense.
Although Feldman, an adjunct professor of psychiatry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, discussed Munchausen by Internet in a research paper more than 10 years ago, he says the incidence of the disorder increases steadily due to a rise in social networking and online support groups.
A proliferation of medical websites has also supplied the information needed to concoct faux symptoms associated with real terminal diseases.
“The Internet world is perfect for expanding this type of deception,” says Feldman, who has studied factitious disorders for more than 20 years.
Examples of this type of hoax are plentiful and include the well-known case of “April Rose,” in which a Michigan woman drew the support of conservative Christians when, in 2009, she wrote extensively -- and “beautifully,” according to Feldman -- of carrying a fetus with a terminal disease rather than undergo an abortion.
After attention, apparel and money was sent her way, she posted a picture of herself holding what she said was the dead child. The hoax came to an end after a doll maker in New York recognized the “baby” as a lifelike toy that she herself owned.
In an earlier case in late 2005, an international expression of grief in the online community ended in anger and disbelief after a “confidante” of “limeybean” wrote that she had finally died after bravely detailing for thousands of online sympathizers her struggle with tuberculosis.
The files of chroniclers of such hoaxes -- several websites are devoted to investigating the veracity of online correspondents who contend they are terminally ill – also contain the case of a women who had a “friend” write that she had died when, in truth, the woman did not want to hand over patterns she had promised to members of her online knitting group.
Feldman, whose book Playing Sick? includes information about the disorder, says mental health practitioners rarely have the chance to probe the psyches of the offenders because, after an often dramatic confrontation online by someone who has found them out, they log off, disappear, or reappear elsewhere as someone with a different terminal illness.The greatest damage, he says, is to support groups that, in many cases, have rallied behind an individual.
“These groups have sometimes been destroyed as a result of this. They divide into camps of believers and nonbelievers. They fight about the minutiae of posts and, eventually, administrators of the site have to bar further discussion of and condolences to the patient because it has excluded all other discussion,” he says.
In his writings, Feldman describes the case of a woman who claimed to be the sister of a patient with terminal cystic fibrosis. She posted updates until the sister died. After the tale was debunked, the woman admitted that she had made up the story and, he says, ‘actually made fun of support group members for being gullible.”.
Clinicians have had the chance to get inside the minds of other such hoaxsters.
One California woman, through the creation of an online sister, posted her own death in a car accident. She said later that she regretted doing so, but that the outpouring of grief over her “death” made her feel loved.
“Limeybean,” also went online to explain herself in a treatise that in itself was an attention-getter. She apologized to those who
had mourned her and had been grief-stricken by her “death” and the subsequent revelation that they had been hookwinked.
She confessed to another as-yet unnamed disease of the modern age:
“I’ve always had a problem,” she wrote, “when it comes to telling the truth on the internet, to be honest.”
Joyce Gemperlein is a frequent contributor to Obit.
Joyce Gemperlein is a regular contributor to Obit.
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