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Playing Sick?
Untangling the Web of Munchausen
Syndrome, Munchausen Syndrome by
Proxy, Malingering and Factitious Disorder
by Marc D. Feldman
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When a person fakes
illness or
injury to satisfy emotional needs,
doctors and family members are lured into a costly,
frustrating,
and potentially deadly web of deceit. |
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Editorial Review
 Taken from bizarre cases of real patients,
Playing Sick? is the first book to chronicle the
devastating impact of phony illnesses--factitious
disorders, Munchausen syndrome, Munchausen by proxy,
and malingering--on patients and caregivers alike.
Psychiatrist Marc Feldman describes patients'
strange motivations, from malingerers who invent
chronic back pain to avoid work to mothers who
demand major abdominal surgery for their healthy
children because they derive perverse pleasure from
medical attention. Self-induced bleeding, fake
fevers, and even a bogus asthma attack so convincing
that doctors rush the patient to ICU are the stock
in trade of patients with these disorders.
Practitioners are deeply disturbed by these
patients, angry about the time and resources they
consume but nervous about confronting them with the
truth.
Based on years of
research and clinical practice, Playing Sick?
provides the clues that can help practitioners and
family members recognize these disorders, avoid
invasive procedures, and sort out the motives that
drive people to hurt themselves and deceive others.
With insight and years of hands-on experience,
Feldman shows how to get these emotionally ill
patients the psychiatric help they need.
Playing Sick?
by Marc Feldman.
Hardcover
- 256 pages (May 2004)
Brunner-Routledge
Publishers; ISBN:
0415949343
 buy
this book
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An
Interview with AsherMeadow
Why Dr. Feldman
Wrote Playing Sick?
I
have received thousands of emailed inquiries through my
website
www.munchausen.com
from people desperate to come to terms with so-called
“disease forgery.” There has been a gaping hole in the
literature, and I have had almost no resources to which
I could direct these individuals. I stood back and
recognized that, which sickness is a costly
inconvenience for most of us, and the thought of serious
disease scares us, there are people who actually enjoy
the benefits of the “sick role.” The general public and
even the medical community remains unaware of how to
recognize and address factitious disorder and Munchausen
Syndrome, in which patients take playing sick to
extremes. Munchausen by proxy maltreatment is also
shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding; it is the
often-fatal variation in which mothers invent or induce
illnesses in their children. I knew that I could put
together a book filled with first-hand stories that
evoke sorrow and shock toward people who view illness as
emotional salvation, but at the same time could clarify
the misconceptions and provide a hopeful look at
intervention and treatment.
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More Books by Marc
Feldman: |
 Stranger
than Fiction: When Our Minds Betray Us by Marc
Feldman, Jacqueline Feldman, Roxenne Smith,1998 ISBN:
0880489308. |
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Patient
or Pretender: Inside the Strange World of Factitious
Disorders by Dr. Marc Feldman / John Wiley
& Sons / Published 1995 |
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The
Spectrum of Factitious Disorders The New
England Journal of Medicine - December 26, 1996, Volume 335,
Number 26, Edited by Marc Feldman and Stuart Eisendrath.
229pp. Washington, D.C., American Psychiatric Press,
1996 / ISBN 0-88048-909-X |
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|
 Marc D. Feldman, M.D. is
about to release his fourth book, Playing Sick?
which was written both for the general public and for
professionals interested in why people feign or produce
illness in themselves or in others (i.e., Munchausen by
proxy, or MBP). The book is filled with first-hand
accounts from patients, MBP perpetrators, family
members, friends, and colleagues, and humanizes
phenomena that otherwise seem bewildering. Dr. Feldman
is Attending Psychiatrist at the Montclair Pain and
Rehabilitation Institute in Birmingham, Alabama. He is
also Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University
of Alabama, and performs medicolegal consultation
throughout the United States. He is a Diplomate of the
American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and the
National Board of Medical Examiners and Distinguished
Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.
A native of New York
State, Dr. Feldman has discussed MBP, factitious
disorders, Munchausen syndrome, malingering and many
other topics in psychiatry in appearances on CNN’s “Your
Health,” “Larry King Live,” “Good Morning America,”
“20/20,” “Dateline,” “Donahue,” “Court TV,” and other
television and radio programs in the U.S., Canada,
England, Australia, Japan, and Austria. Dr. Feldman's
work has been the subject of articles in the New York
Times, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times,
the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, the
Washington Post, the Toronto Star, the
Times of London, JAMA, and Japan’s Nekkei,
and in magazines such as GQ, People,
Cosmopolitan, Shape, Psychology Today,
Self, and NOW (UK). His first book,
Patient or Pretender, was published in 1994. His
second book, The Spectrum of Factitious Disorders
(co-edited with Stuart Eisendrath, M.D.), was published
by the American Psychiatric Press in 1996. His third
book, Stranger Than Fiction: When Our Minds Betray Us
(co-authored with his wife, Jacqueline Feldman, M.D.),
was published by the American Psychiatric Press in
1998. Stranger Than Fiction is a review of both
common and controversial topics in psychiatry that is
intended for the general public.
Dr. Feldman is the author
of more than 80 publications as well as numerous
national and regional presentations in the field of
psychiatry. He is the recipient of numerous awards for
his work, and has been listed for years in The Best
Doctors in America.
Visit
the author's web site
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