Dr Google ‘driving rise’ in fabricated illness
GOOGLE is driving up cases of a condition that makes parents wrongly believe their child is ill, Great Ormond Street doctors have warned.
Obsessive researching of symptoms on the internet is leading to an increase in fabricated or induced illness (FII), according to medics from the leading children’s hospital.
The condition, also known as “Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy”, sees parents’ efforts to convince doctors their child is unwell causing actual harm, or raising the likelihood.
Doctors from Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) in London have helped formulate Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) guidance. It advises paediatricians to intervene early and communicate openly with care-givers who may be worrying excessively, rather than hold secret meetings with colleagues which can cause rifts between medical professionals and families. This will help avoid children being unnecessarily taken into care when the issues could have been resolved, they claim.
Access to the internet is a particular issue, doctors say, as parents are now able to look up potential diagnoses and fuel their fears that their child is ill.
Dr Alison Steele, consultant paediatrician at GOSH and officer for child protection and safeguarding at the RCPCH, said: “I think it’s genuinely become more of an issue and part of the reason is Dr Google and social media. I think sometimes articles from not reputable sources can drive this and it’s about how you discuss it with families so they trust you as the clinician and not what is written on social media.”
Dr Danya Glaser, honorary consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist at GOSH, said: “Many parents have developed wrong beliefs about the child’s health, helped by the internet and other areas. They then become anxious about the child in a way that harms the child.”
Behaviour associated with FII includes care-givers exaggerating or lying about their child’s symptoms, manipulating test results or deliberately inducing symptoms of illness.