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Special Education or Special Medication?

© Marilyn Robb

Whenever I hear about a new topic or issue that affects young people in any way I pay attention. Curiously, as soon as I start paying attention it is as if it is popping up all over the place. Is it that it was always there and I just never paid it any mind? Or is it really newly discovered and worth investigating? My latest one is Munchausen-by-proxy syndrome. I first heard about it a few weeks ago on a television show. Shortly after that an article appeared online at Education Week (November 20th, 2002). Of course, my eyes and ears perked up. So I looked into it.

According to the article in Education Week "Maternity Wars". By Lisa Fine Goldstein…" The syndrome is named for an 18th-century German aristocrat and military mercenary, Karl Friedrich Hieronymus, Freiherr von Münchhausen, more popularly known as the Baron von Munchausen, who was renowned for spinning tall tales about his adventures. In 1951, Richard Asher, a British physician, coined the term "Munchausen syndrome" to describe patients who faked their own illnesses. In 1977, the British pediatrician Roy Meadow, identifying a variation on that tendency, used the term "Munchausen by Proxy" to describe someone who fabricates illnesses in someone else".

Dr. Marc Feldman maintains an online website dedicated to the study of Munchausen and other factitious disorders (http://www.munchausen.com). He describes people with such disorders as …" they deliberately mislead others into thinking they (or their children) have serious medical or psychological problems, often resulting in extraordinary numbers of medication trials, diagnostic tests, hospitalizations, and even surgery… that they know aren't really needed". In short these people fake their own or other's illness as an attention-seeking strategy.

So how does this impact our education systems?

As Lisa Fine Goldstein writes in "Maternity Wars", parents, usually mothers, are fabricating educational disabilities in their children and demanding unnecessary special school services and even threatening teachers and schools with law suits if their demands are not met. The mostly commonly faked disorders include ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), behaviour disorders and learning disorders since these are so hard to detect and accurately diagnose. My major concern about this is the on-going unresolved debate about the labeling of our young people in schools and the problems of treatment and mistreatment with drugs. (see articles: "What really is Special Education. Part 1 http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/8425... and What is Special Education? More on Labelling" http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/8425... A Harvard study looked at five families with nine children whose mothers were diagnosed with Munchausen by proxy. Of those nine children, six had been on stimulant medications for ADHD. They were removed form their homes and taken off the medication and returned to regular classes.

The copyright of the article Special Education or Special Medication? in Emotional Intelligence is owned by Marilyn Robb. Permission to republish Special Education or Special Medication? in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.