47 - Factitious disorder, better known as Munchausen’s syndrome, is when someone fakes being sick for no apparent reason aside from the benefit of assuming the sick role. Factitious disorder imposed on another, or Munchausen’s by proxy, is when a caregiver (usually a mother) claims their child is sick, in many cases causing the child to be sick through poisoning. We take a deep dive into the literature about these disorders, discussing the extreme lengths used to pretend they are sick, including lying about symptoms, falsifying medical tests and causing illnesses in themselves. Both disorders are fascinating, rare, and result in unneeded investigations and procedures (eg. surgery). The mortality rate is high ~10% and for those who survive often are disfigured.

At about the 60 minute mark we have an extended Things We Came Across segment. We have two listener TWCA articles and ponder what makes someone cool and ask the question ‘what is art?’ (Thanks to Andy Tagg and Laura Finlayson-Short). Amy reveals the true reason psychs are called shrinks and Hunter discusses important research on gin consumption.

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Articles:

Incidence article : https://www.hindawi.com/journals/bn/2019/3891809/

Online support groups: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165178114002613

Perpetrators of Munchausen’s by Proxy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28750264

TWCA

Cool status (thanks Dr Andy Tagg) - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140197119301083?via%3Dihub

Gin & context - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29136090

The brain on art (thanks Laura Finlayson-Short) - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3330757/

Where does ‘shrink’ come from? Season 16, episode 13 of QI - https://qi.com/