What is MBP a personality disorder or a mental illness

As bad as MBP is, is it a personality disorder or a mental illness.

Is plain old Munchausen catergorised as a personality disorder or a mental illness.

just wondering, and if anyone has any decent links it would be appreciated

I suffered this at the hand of my mom for more than 25 years until my own psychiatrist did a 'single-blind' test, found I had no signs of what others had diagnosed me with, and, after a year of carefully going over my case, concluded that I was indeed a victim.
That being said, I'll never forget how he clearly described it to me as more of a classic personality disorder than any 'true mental illness'. Here's almost a direct quote of what he told me:
[I'd just told him I'd heard of MBP, but didn't know much about it...then asked him if it was 'anything like hypochondria']
"No--hypochondriacs really are sufferers of a mental illness; they can't help what they're doing. They really do think something's always wrong with them, and have almost no control over the compulsion that something's always needing fixed, whether it's in their heads, or some physical ailment."
"Your mother knew exactly what she was doing the whole time she did it. Munchausens by Proxy is using someone else to further your own ego--to make yourself feel superior, to validate--even massage--their ego, no matter how much they harm their victims. That's why it's a crime--it has nothing to do with that person's lack of self-esteem, although some quacks will try and get you to believe that."
"People who do this not only know exactly what they're doing--they also are fully aware it's wrong; this is why most cases of it are correctly pursued as criminal cases, to make these people accountable for what they've done to others, because, believe me, if they aren't forced to be accountable, they will never admit they've hurt their victim or victims. She's also a classic narcissist, as most of them are, which means as long as you live you'll never hear her apologize for hurting you, almost ruining your life...controlling you, not once. She'll go to her grave thinking she was not only okay doing that, but, if allowed, she'd do it all over again, every time, and be gratified for doing the things she did."

That was over a decade ago, and that guy is still right to this day, on every count.

I have not seen you in a while. I apologise for not replying previously, but I had a few crisis's back to back at work which took me off here for a while. I am glad you dropped back in.

It sounds like you have an excellent perspective on it and I can only agree. I am guessing you are in the US.

It is a very rare disorder. It combines many things, planning, control, lack of empathy, narcissism, the wish to gain attention, .. many things, but it is very rare.

I also sometimes sit and wonder what I was supposed to be in life. Surely not just a plaything for my mother, to destroy at will. Stopped believing in God when I was a young child, hard to keep faith having gone through that. Yes I wonder what I could have been.

We had a good discussion here recently, took much of it offline as some of the info shared was counter intuitive, and I did not want it put out there for the trolls. A couple of the things we both shared was our mothers were alone in controlling the children, they were effectively single parent families. Our mothers showed great kindness and care in public, but that could quickly turn to physical brutality in private. They both craved attention from their parents.

The other forum member is new to this realisation and is still trying to work out how her mother did it ( I recommended detailed blood tests). Mine was a combination of triggering an allergy then poisoning me with excessive medicine doses.

Do any of these sound familiar to you.

Hope you are doing okay, and if you wish to share, that is fine, if not just drop in when you want to.

Very quiet here, our mothers are very, very rare and for the sake of the world that is not a bad thing.