A parent who appears medically knowledgeable, fascinated with medical details and hospital gossip, appears to enjoy the hospital environment, and expresses interest in the details of other patients problems. A highly attentive parent who is reluctant to leave their childs side and who themselves seem to require constant attention. A parent who appears unusually calm in the face of serious difficulties in their childs medical course while being highly supportive and encouraging of the physician, or one who is angry, devalues staff, and demands further intervention, more procedures, second opinions, and transfers to more sophisticated facilities. The suspected parent may work in the health-care field themselves or profess an interest in a health-related job. The signs and symptoms of a childs illness may lessen or simply vanish in the parents absence (hospitalization and careful monitoring may be necessary to establish this causal relationship). A family history of similar or unexplained illness or death in a sibling. A parent with symptoms similar to their childs own medical problems or an illness history that itself is puzzling and unusual. A suspected emotionally distant relationship between parents; the spouse often fails to visit the patient and has little contact with physicians even when the child is hospitalized with a serious illness. A parent who reports dramatic, negative events, such as house fires, burglaries, or car accidents, that affect them and their family while their child is undergoing treatment.
She was convicted of second-degree murder on March 2, 2015, and sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.Dee Dee Blanchard was a Missouri mother who was murdered by her daughter and a boyfriend in 2015 after having claimed for years that her daughter, Gypsy Rose, was sick and disabled; to the point of shaving her head, making her use a wheelchair in public, and subjecting her to unnecessary medication and surgery. Gypsy possessed no outstanding illnesses. Feldman said it is the first case he is aware of in a quarter-century of research where the victim killed the abuser. Their story was shown on HBOs documentary film Mommy Dead and Dearest and is featured in the Hulu limited series The Act. Gypsy Rose pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and is serving a ten-year sentence, her boyfriend was convicted of first-degree murder and is sentenced to life in prison without parole. Rapper Eminem has spoken about how his mother would frequently take him to hospitals to receive treatment for illnesses that he did not have. His song "Cleanin Out My Closet" includes a lyric regarding the illness, "...going through public housing systems victim of Münchausen syndrome.