Munchausen's syndrome was first described in 1951 in the UK. This disorder is still of great interest to researchers and psychiatrists around the world because of its enormous complexity and diversity, depending on what kind of disease the patient invents for himself. Moreover, pathologies simulated by patients can be both surgical and therapeutic in nature, and sometimes patients may be “required” emergency care.
Often, such patients wander from one medical institution to another for a long time in search of surgical intervention to "cure". It is characteristic that the descriptions of symptoms that patients give almost always differ from real complaints in implausibility, excessive dramatization. Sometimes the stories can be similar to those legends told by the famous literary hero Baron Munchausen, which caused such an unusual name for the disease. Often, Munchausen’s syndrome is called hospital addiction, professional patient’s syndrome, hospital frequent syndrome, and so on.
Entering the admission department, patients describe their complaints to the doctors who receive them as life-threatening, they complain of acute abdominal pain, loss of consciousness, bleeding, and huge blood loss. In addition, such states are described that in real life it is simply impossible to meet, but they are necessarily a threat to the life of the patient. This almost always allows you to determine that this is just a simulation of disease.
Often , Munchausen's disease occurs to those doctors who are on duty at the hospital in the evening. Most likely, this is due to the fact that patients are inclined to believe that only inexperienced young specialists remain on duty at this time, who can easily not notice inconsistencies in the stories of the simulator.
Upon admission, he usually immediately begins to insist on surgery, trying to show the doctor how “bad” he is and how “his illness” is. It is usually possible to determine that the patient has Munchausen’s syndrome when examining the place where, according to him, the pain is localized. Often in this place there are many traces of surgical interventions. It is interesting that, upon hearing the doctor’s refusal to perform the operation, patients do not remain in the hospital, as required by the doctor in accordance with their “condition”, but simply leave to apply to the other hospital with the same complaints.
However, Munchausen syndrome is not always manifested precisely in the desire to undergo surgical interventions. Often the patient’s motive may be getting shelter at night, fleeing the police, getting painkillers (drugs). In accordance with this and with what disease the patient is trying to simulate, several types of disorders are distinguished. However, all people with Munchausen’s syndrome are characterized by inability to establish connections with other people, which is the reason for their loneliness, pathological deceit, hypochondria. Often, such patients, once in a hospital, begin to exert influence on other patients there, using their knowledge in medicine. Of course, this is a big problem for doctors, since thereby a patient with Munchausen syndrome aggravates the course of diseases of other people.