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The Haninge incident, where a 41-year-old man was found in an apartment, poorly restrained and isolated, has received a lot of attention. It is still unknown what is behind the mother seems to have kept her son imprisoned for almost 30 years and the woman herself denies the crime.
Björn Lundin is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and one of Sweden’s leading experts on the unusual diagnosis of Münchhausen syndrome by proxy. He has no information on the Haninge case, but from what has emerged so far, there are some similarities to the diagnosis, he says.
– It appeared when I found out about this case.
Münchhausen syndrome by proxy, MSBP, is a behavioral disorder that manifests itself in child abuse through the falsification of symptoms. This means that the guardian declares that the child is ill and often spends time in the health system with various made-up or exaggerated symptoms. But there are also cases when parents do not seek help for the child.
– The similarity lies in declaring that the child is sick, not in seeking care all the time and actively falsifying the child’s medical history, but in exaggerating, for example, that mild asthma is life-threatening, says Björn Lundin.
According to Björn Lundin, MSBP cases are individual and difficult to group together, and the reasons for action differ from case to case, making them difficult to detect along with the fact that it is an unusual conduct disorder. Today, a few thousand cases are reported worldwide and in 95 percent of cases, the mother is the perpetrator.
On the edge of trouble There are some cases described in the scientific literature where children have remained at home and cared for until death between the ages of 25 and 55.
– They have been laid down at some point during the growing years and treated as sick, so that their entire musculoskeletal system has faded In some cases, they have even been found to be severely malnourished. It’s difficult to know whether there has been a degree of intentional or unintentional negligence, he says.
Björn Lundin, child and adolescent psychiatrist.
Photo: Private
Björn Lundin says there are few perpetrators with MSBP who recognize and tell their story, therefore it is not known what driving forces are behind their actions. In some cases, it can be a way of dealing with your own loneliness anxiety. Then you take the child to the health center for attention and the anxiety disappears. Sometimes it can be a desire to exercise power not only over the child but also over the medical staff through their lies.
In a case like this in Haninge One explanation may be that the father feels lonely and abandoned and needs a person to care for and care for in order to have a life content. By keeping the child at home, the parents feel better. Gradually it can become an addictive relationship between the child and the parent from which they cannot break free.
– Some children are socially insecure and closely connected with a parent, they have not been taught to make their own contacts but the parent creates their entire worldview and in the end they get stuck. They do not question their life but fall into the role assigned to them by their mother and thus continue in a downward spiral. This is how these cases are described, not every case, but the ones I have come across, this has been able to be identified, says Björn Lundin.
Also a trauma It can trigger a situation like this, for example, that the father has lost a child, which means that you overprotect another child if you have not received enough help and support to cope with the loss.
– A problem when it comes to Münchhausen syndrome by proxy is that it is not a mental illness but a form of child abuse that can be seen very differently in the aggressor. But the person does not need a psychiatric diagnosis.
The possibility of the child returning to a normal life after being isolated for a long time depends on the personality and the support of society. If you are a weaker and more anxious person, it will be more difficult compared to someone who has a more robust personality, says Björn Lundin. But with the right help and a willingness to accept help, most people can live a decent life, he believes.
Read more: The relative who found the man: “He whispered my name over and over again”
