Hi there,
Thank you for allowing me to join your forum.
I apologise for the length of this post, but I am concerned for my niece and nephews' welfare.
My question is in relation to a female family member. We, the extended family, are beginning to believe that something isn't right. Some years ago, out of the blue, my 7 year old niece was diagnosed with OCD. Prior to this diagnosis we had not noticed anything wrong with this child. She was lively, full of joy and appeared just like her cousins. My SIL found a top specialist in OCD and had my niece begin treatment( not medication, as far as we are aware). Very quickly this child went from behaving normally to displaying extremely abnormal behaviour. Her mother had told her that she had a life long disorder and would never recover, that she needed to see a specialist, that she should come out of school for a year etc. We never saw evidence of the "raw hands" from the compulsive hand washing, or the fear of toilets, or the neatness and obsessions reported, or any of the many other symptoms that my SIL insisted were present. My SIL began to become an "expert" on OCD through reading on the internet.. She videoed her daughter, kept notes, and then began to forage a very close relationship with her daughter's specialist and spent a lot of time making appointments to talk about OCD. And even gave a talk at a professional's OCD conference due to her growing relationship with her daughter's specialist..She got a lot of attention and notoriety for this..It became her conversation piece.
Later, she tells us that my niece has some traits of the Autism spectrum..Then we learn that her hearing is super sensitive. A visit to a top cardiologist because niece might have Raynaud's syndrome and will need medication for life to save her hands.. The list is endless. Constant big announcements about her children's illnesses and of course we have been so sympathetic, until recently when.....
Shortly after my niece was diagnosed with OCD we learnt that her brother, my nephew, had been diagnosed with ADD. That he had all sorts of difficulties and needed help. He had been diagnosed by the same specialist as his sister.. Heretofore this boy was completely normal to us, just like another boy his age. His difficulty was that he had difficulty sitting the whole day at a school desk, who's kid doesn't!..More exploration ensued..All the time my SIL is mixing with doctors and getting a lot of attention..More recently now she has diagnosed the same boy with OCD, and this week Depressive Disorder. We have managed to speak to this boy, who is now 15 years old, and he believes that he has all of those things wrong with him.. He is feeling down but we feel that with all the weight of the labels and his mother's pressure.. He has told us that she screams at him and has thrown objects at him.. The father has bought into the whole thing and is supportive of my SIL mainly internet diagnosis..This week my SIL was asked about the depressive disorder diagnosis and where it came from and she began screaming and accusing people of interfering etc..
This is a worrying situation to my family. We are non plussed as to what to do. Can you, anyone, in your experience recognise any of this as something you'd recognise as Munchausen by Proxy? We feel that we need help..
Many thanks in advance for reading and I appreciate any responses.
Your's Littlegrey