Questions about Yhe Mother of All Cons - Munchausen's

[MrSchubertWhiskers]

I was watching The Mother of All Cons documentary on iplayer recently and although they explained a lot of the deception, how did they get away with/set up Meg being in visited in hospital by friends with a shunt in her skull?

And all those trips to hospital where she was visited, why did the doctors not notice that she didn't have a brain tumour?

For those who haven't seen it, it's about a mum and daughter, Jean & Meg who set up a charity for children with cancer and other terminal conditions, called Believe in Magic. They were highly promoted by One Direction. Everyone who knew them, family included, believed Meg to be living with a virulence brain tumour.

Some parents eventually suspicious and found out that money had been embezzled. After Meg's tragic & unrelated death, it was discovered she didn't have a brain tumour and was a victim of medical abuse - munchausens - by her mother, Jean, who enjoyed socialising with famous people.

I had the same questions! Hopefully someone here knows more than what we were told in the documentary.

There was something in the documentary after it had all been exposed about pressure in the skull that had to be relieved which is why she got the drain out in that could be seen. It was said very quickly and definitely skirted over.

Was it a case of there was a medical issue and it was hugely exaggerated rather than completely fabricated ?

I thought they said that because she claimed these intense headaches, they put in a pump to measure the pressure on her brain. And it was slightly elevated, but not enough to cause long term damage.

She kept going to hospital for different things, and having millions of tests. And she was severely drug addicted, so she did have a lot of health issues.

There was another case in the US (Scamanda documentary) and she kept showing to hospital with made up symptoms, and taking loads of photos when they were doing routine tests, then claiming it was chemo.

Doctors often diagnose by ruling other things out so I guess if you are constantly reporting certain symptoms they will do tests and procedures to rule out serious things. I don’t think it’s that uncommon for people to end up with unnecessary procedures. Also travelling to different places where you are not known is a tactic. There is a podcast about this too, not sure if there is any more information on that.

What I find terrifying is that MSBP (now FDIA - factitious disorder imposed on another) is vanishingly rare yet a lot of parents get a similar ‘label’ It is also a medical diagnosis and can only be diagnosed by a medical professional. When it happens it’s usually severe and extremely dangerous for the child. Over the last few years FII - fabricated or induced illness (not a diagnosis but a way to describe a situation) has surfaced as some kind of pre MSBP and it is used a lot against SEN parents who are pushing for diagnosis and support, it’s also used against children with genuine illness but under the ‘perplexing presentations’ both FII and PP can be stated by anyone and are not in manuals but in safeguarding literature. It’s quite terrifying when you look into it.

She did have an illness requiring the shunt- intercranial hypertension.
After that presumably she was just accessing health services for investigations. Not to mention she was addicted to morphine, which will have had its own effects.

Thanks everyone, that all makes sense. I felt really sorry for her sister and friends, who were so affected by it. How you come to terms with all that I don't know!

The terms have changed over the last few years to better reflect the behaviours rather than them being distinct diagnoses. Im not sure ‘vanishingly rare’ is accurate, but like anything, there’s a spectrum with the very severe life threatening for children cases on one end, and very anxious parent pushing for excessive testing on the other. There’s may not be a life threatening risk to the latter, but potentially a level of emotional harm where the child is exposed to repeated ‘there’s something wrong with you’. The significant rise of awareness of SEN is a really good thing for those children who in the past did not get the right support for them to thrive. On the other hand, it opens the door to abuse when some of the conditions rely on a huge input from the parent’s description of behaviours. This in turn then impacts on those who truly benefit from the diagnosis. The current climate of ‘everyone has autism/ ADHD’ really doesn’t help those who really do have the conditions as it lessens the general perception of the impact on them.
There’s a really good podcast about cases in the US ‘Nobody should believe me’ where they cover the serious cases which have ended in the sad death or near miss of a child. Some shocking cases of parental rights overtaking child safety, and makes me really glad I’m not living there! They cover the ‘Take care of Maya’ documentary on Netflix, and how biased in favour of the family the documentary producers were.