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You know, like many people, even today, it was mind-blowing to imagine that somebody could falsify medical illness so successfully that clinicians, physicians, would treat that

that child, you know, with very sometimes intrusive types of treatments and not ever suspect

that they were being misled. I found that just unbelievable, but then also as a psychologist, of course,

incredibly fascinating. Back in the early 90s, Brenda Bersh was a brand new baby psychologist. At that point

in time, she didn't know much about Munchausen by proxy. It had never been mentioned in her university psychology courses, and it wasn't until her

internship year that she even first heard the term.

I had never heard the term before, as had most people had not at that point in time.

But then, early in her clinical rotations and a pediatrics ward, Brenda was thrown into the Muchhausen by proxy deep end.

I had a supervisor who had quite a number of cases of Muchasen by proxy, and in fact, there was one that had just come into the hospital at the time that I rotated over there. And interestingly, it was

his first case seven years earlier. It had resurfaced because he came to learn that the judge

had ultimately sent this child back into the care of her mother. This child was a young girl,

a 10-year-old, and this was an extreme case, because when her mother had first come to the attention of doctors seven years earlier, it was discovered that one of the lies she was telling was that her daughter would have episodes where she would stop breathing.

She had been falsifying illness in her daughter, her whole life, and the mother was a

licensed respiratory therapist. So not only did she know the language to use, but she also knew

what kind of symptoms to report to steer the doctors towards a particular diagnosis. And so

she actually, when she was quite young,

at one point had a tracheotomy, so a hole in her throat, attached to a breathing machine,

23 hours a day. The child had no medical problem. The mother was so convincing that the clinicians

believed her.

And so that's an example, you know, of how severe of a case it was.

This is All In The Mind. I'm Sana Khadar.

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