- Apr 14, 2001
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Cybersickness - Munchausen by Internet Breeds a Generation of Fakers
Culture/Society News Keywords: DEEP IN THE HURTGEN FOREST
Source: Village Voice
Published: 6/27/01 Author: Francine Russo
Over nearly three years, from 1998 to 2000, a woman?let's call her
Anna?posted to an online support group for people with mental
illness. To the larger circle of readers, she acted mostly as
friendly counselor. But to a select few, she e-mailed stories of
escalating catastrophes. Her husband and two children had perished in
a plane crash, she wrote. As a kid, her father had molested her, and
she had suffered multiple personality disorder. Finally, she told her
trusted?and trusting?confidants that she had just been diagnosed with
leukemia.
Gwen Grabb, a psychotherapy intern and mother of three in Los
Angeles, says the group believed Anna because she took on the role of
helping others, revealing her own difficulties much later, and to an
intimate audience. "She was very bright," recalls Grabb. "She was
very supportive and kind. One day, she started telling me about `the
crash,' what they found in the black box, how you could hear her
daughter screaming. I had known her a year. I believed her."
But as the tales became more elaborate and grotesque, Grabb grew
suspicious. Along with another group member?Pam Cohen, a bereavement
counselor in the Mid-Atlantic region?she did some research and
discovered Anna was making it up. It was a shock to all, but worse
than that to Cohen. "It is like an emotional rape," she says. People
may have been upset over the online life and fatal cancer of the
fictional Kaycee, whose creator admitted last month she'd invented
the high school character for expressive purposes. But that was
geared to a general audience, however easily suckered. Pretenders
like Anna hurt a much more vulnerable group?folks who may be
seriously ill and are seeking help.
The Internet was made for such fakers, says Dr. Marc D. Feldman, a
psychiatrist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and an expert
on Munchausen syndrome and factitious disorder. People like these, he
explains, suffer from a form of Munchausen, a condition in which they
either feign illness or victimization, or actually induce illness or
injury in order to gain sympathy and become the center of attention.
With another variation, Munchausen by proxy, caretakers seek these
rewards by making their charges sick. Cyberspace has added a new
twist?one Feldman labels Munchausen by Internet.
To credibly represent themselves as ill?often with obscure and
dramatic maladies?Munchausen sufferers often study medical
literature, and even go so far as to poison themselves to simulate
particular symptoms. "On the Internet," Feldman explains, "it's very
easy to fake. All you have to do is click and you go to another
disease site. You can become an expert on anything in 30 minutes by
visiting Google." By the time Feldman published his
article "Munchausen by Internet" in the Southern Medical Journal in
July of last year, he'd already studied over 20 cases of
cyberMunch. "The incidence is increasing rapidly," he reports.
Feldman runs his own site, and provides a link to another started
this year by Cohen, Victims of Factitious Liars). Cohen says the
people who congregate at her site feel betrayed, but they understand
the fakers are seriously troubled.
The irony in these Munchausen cases is that those pretending to be
ill really are sick, but they rarely go to the right kind of doctor.
When confronted on the Web, they often disappear. In person, they may
show some contrition even though they resist treatment. One of Dr.
Feldman's first Munchausen patients was a profoundly depressed young
woman who was feigning terminal breast cancer. He hospitalized her
and successfully treated her with psychotherapy and drugs. "We tell
them we'll give them treatment for their emotional illness," Feldman
explains, "that they don't need to be ill to see a doctor anymore."
Getting them proper treatment could prevent a lot of harm. Off-line,
by some estimates, people with Munchausen and similar disorders
consume as much as $20 billion annually in unnecessary medical
procedures. Those taken in by online Munchausen sufferers are often
homebound. For them, the Internet is a lifeline to the outside
world. "To discover that their love and nurturing have been
misdirected is like being taunted with their own illness," Feldman
says. "It's devastating."
Diane Hamilton, a librarian in Cape May, New Jersey, and a migraine
sufferer, brought one such case to Dr. Feldman's attention. From 1998
to 1999, a visitor posted to a long-standing migraine support group
on Usenet. He claimed to be a 15-year-old medical student. Not only
did he have migraines, he said, but he also had a seizure disorder
and hemophilia.
At first he won great love and approval from the group. Then his
stories become more and more incredible. His mother was deaf and his
father was alcoholic and abusive. He had to skateboard three miles a
day to get the bus to medical school, and he had a nightclub job as a
drummer. When group members began to question his stories more and
more aggressively, his "mother" signed on to say how their doubt
might plunge the boy into another episode of depression. Finally, as
he was met with increasing skepticism, both the "teen" and
his "mother" disappeared from the site, having victimized a
vulnerable group..
"Some of them had such bad migraines they had to be on Social
Security disability," says Hamilton. "Others had them from head
traumas from accidents. Many had been on drugs for years with no
relief."
After their encounter with the fake poster, the group never
recovered. It split into factions of believers and doubters, its
spirit of trust and caring broken.
An even more bizarre case involved the 1997 duping of a Web-based fan
club for the musical Rent. Many of the members had met while waiting
on line for tickets in New York, and for them the club became a
support network. Catherine Skidmore, a 26-year-old technology
consultant in New York, was one of those taken in a student claiming
to suffer from a fatal liver and nerve disease.
"She showed up once with an IV shunt taped in her arm," Skidmore
recalled. "And she'd go to the cast members and try to get sympathy."
In this way, the woman was able to meet and have dinner with Rent
stars Anthony Rapp and Gwen Stewart. When she returned to Chicago,
the group started getting e-mail from a "friend" of the woman's. The
messages were full of medical jargon and day-by-day accounts of
the "sick" person's condition as she slipped into a coma. "I had lost
a friend who didn't tell me she was dying," says Skidmore. "So I
wrote to her and said I didn't want her to be alone."
Skidmore and others in the group prayed, sent messages, and bought
tickets to fly to Chicago. But whenever they were about to leave, the
friend, who refused to give the name of the hospital, would write
that Rachel had miraculously recovered.
Eventually, these Lazarus-like revivals aroused suspicion. Group
members uncovered the hoax by calling all the hospitals in Chicago.
Rapp's boyfriend, Josh Safran, was one of the fraud detectors. "I
can't believe the lengths she went to. Her e-mails were very
medically proficient. And everybody's lives were so messed up. It was
total drama." Although Safran was skeptical early on, he hesitated to
mention his doubts. "If she turned out to be sick after this, we were
horrible people."
The people who perpetrate these hoaxes don't usually consider the
ways they're harming others. One former Munchausen patient, a 40-year-
old computer technician on the West Coast, used to hurt herself and
pretend she'd been the victim of an attack or accident. "I called
them 'scenarios,'" she explains. "When I'd do something to attract
the paramedics and police, I got an adrenaline rush. I believe I got
addicted to it. At the time, it didn't occur to me I was hurting
anyone but myself."
For those who do not want to be victimized by such folks, however
sick they may or may not be, Dr. Feldman has developed a series of
cues for online detection. Some warning signs are posts that copy
textbook material or other online sites verbatim, and a series of
dramatic declines followed by miraculous recoveries. Be suspicious
when the person makes fantastic claims, he says, resists telephone
contact, or complains that the group is not supportive enough. Be
very suspicious if a "friend" or family member posts for the sick
person?displaying the same writing style and spelling errors.
The treatment for the support-group fakers is psychotherapy. The
treatment for their victims is...another support group. Victims of
Factitious Liars already has 42 members who post regularly about
their own victimization and brainstorm about how to get publicity and
funding to treat Munchausen. Cohen and Grabb are hoping to make a
documentary on the Munchausen phenomenon and have recently received a
substantial contribution from an individual donor.
Paradoxically, one of the issues Cohen and Grabb must confront is
that a member on their own site could be lying. "Look for
inconsistencies in the story over time," Cohen advises her group. "If
you become suspicious, e-mail me and let me know. For the most part,
we have to take what people say at face value. But let's all be aware
that we could get used and get emotionally attached to someone who is
an online liar."
Culture/Society News Keywords: DEEP IN THE HURTGEN FOREST
Source: Village Voice
Published: 6/27/01 Author: Francine Russo
Over nearly three years, from 1998 to 2000, a woman?let's call her
Anna?posted to an online support group for people with mental
illness. To the larger circle of readers, she acted mostly as
friendly counselor. But to a select few, she e-mailed stories of
escalating catastrophes. Her husband and two children had perished in
a plane crash, she wrote. As a kid, her father had molested her, and
she had suffered multiple personality disorder. Finally, she told her
trusted?and trusting?confidants that she had just been diagnosed with
leukemia.
Gwen Grabb, a psychotherapy intern and mother of three in Los
Angeles, says the group believed Anna because she took on the role of
helping others, revealing her own difficulties much later, and to an
intimate audience. "She was very bright," recalls Grabb. "She was
very supportive and kind. One day, she started telling me about `the
crash,' what they found in the black box, how you could hear her
daughter screaming. I had known her a year. I believed her."
But as the tales became more elaborate and grotesque, Grabb grew
suspicious. Along with another group member?Pam Cohen, a bereavement
counselor in the Mid-Atlantic region?she did some research and
discovered Anna was making it up. It was a shock to all, but worse
than that to Cohen. "It is like an emotional rape," she says. People
may have been upset over the online life and fatal cancer of the
fictional Kaycee, whose creator admitted last month she'd invented
the high school character for expressive purposes. But that was
geared to a general audience, however easily suckered. Pretenders
like Anna hurt a much more vulnerable group?folks who may be
seriously ill and are seeking help.
The Internet was made for such fakers, says Dr. Marc D. Feldman, a
psychiatrist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and an expert
on Munchausen syndrome and factitious disorder. People like these, he
explains, suffer from a form of Munchausen, a condition in which they
either feign illness or victimization, or actually induce illness or
injury in order to gain sympathy and become the center of attention.
With another variation, Munchausen by proxy, caretakers seek these
rewards by making their charges sick. Cyberspace has added a new
twist?one Feldman labels Munchausen by Internet.
To credibly represent themselves as ill?often with obscure and
dramatic maladies?Munchausen sufferers often study medical
literature, and even go so far as to poison themselves to simulate
particular symptoms. "On the Internet," Feldman explains, "it's very
easy to fake. All you have to do is click and you go to another
disease site. You can become an expert on anything in 30 minutes by
visiting Google." By the time Feldman published his
article "Munchausen by Internet" in the Southern Medical Journal in
July of last year, he'd already studied over 20 cases of
cyberMunch. "The incidence is increasing rapidly," he reports.
Feldman runs his own site, and provides a link to another started
this year by Cohen, Victims of Factitious Liars). Cohen says the
people who congregate at her site feel betrayed, but they understand
the fakers are seriously troubled.
The irony in these Munchausen cases is that those pretending to be
ill really are sick, but they rarely go to the right kind of doctor.
When confronted on the Web, they often disappear. In person, they may
show some contrition even though they resist treatment. One of Dr.
Feldman's first Munchausen patients was a profoundly depressed young
woman who was feigning terminal breast cancer. He hospitalized her
and successfully treated her with psychotherapy and drugs. "We tell
them we'll give them treatment for their emotional illness," Feldman
explains, "that they don't need to be ill to see a doctor anymore."
Getting them proper treatment could prevent a lot of harm. Off-line,
by some estimates, people with Munchausen and similar disorders
consume as much as $20 billion annually in unnecessary medical
procedures. Those taken in by online Munchausen sufferers are often
homebound. For them, the Internet is a lifeline to the outside
world. "To discover that their love and nurturing have been
misdirected is like being taunted with their own illness," Feldman
says. "It's devastating."
Diane Hamilton, a librarian in Cape May, New Jersey, and a migraine
sufferer, brought one such case to Dr. Feldman's attention. From 1998
to 1999, a visitor posted to a long-standing migraine support group
on Usenet. He claimed to be a 15-year-old medical student. Not only
did he have migraines, he said, but he also had a seizure disorder
and hemophilia.
At first he won great love and approval from the group. Then his
stories become more and more incredible. His mother was deaf and his
father was alcoholic and abusive. He had to skateboard three miles a
day to get the bus to medical school, and he had a nightclub job as a
drummer. When group members began to question his stories more and
more aggressively, his "mother" signed on to say how their doubt
might plunge the boy into another episode of depression. Finally, as
he was met with increasing skepticism, both the "teen" and
his "mother" disappeared from the site, having victimized a
vulnerable group..
"Some of them had such bad migraines they had to be on Social
Security disability," says Hamilton. "Others had them from head
traumas from accidents. Many had been on drugs for years with no
relief."
After their encounter with the fake poster, the group never
recovered. It split into factions of believers and doubters, its
spirit of trust and caring broken.
An even more bizarre case involved the 1997 duping of a Web-based fan
club for the musical Rent. Many of the members had met while waiting
on line for tickets in New York, and for them the club became a
support network. Catherine Skidmore, a 26-year-old technology
consultant in New York, was one of those taken in a student claiming
to suffer from a fatal liver and nerve disease.
"She showed up once with an IV shunt taped in her arm," Skidmore
recalled. "And she'd go to the cast members and try to get sympathy."
In this way, the woman was able to meet and have dinner with Rent
stars Anthony Rapp and Gwen Stewart. When she returned to Chicago,
the group started getting e-mail from a "friend" of the woman's. The
messages were full of medical jargon and day-by-day accounts of
the "sick" person's condition as she slipped into a coma. "I had lost
a friend who didn't tell me she was dying," says Skidmore. "So I
wrote to her and said I didn't want her to be alone."
Skidmore and others in the group prayed, sent messages, and bought
tickets to fly to Chicago. But whenever they were about to leave, the
friend, who refused to give the name of the hospital, would write
that Rachel had miraculously recovered.
Eventually, these Lazarus-like revivals aroused suspicion. Group
members uncovered the hoax by calling all the hospitals in Chicago.
Rapp's boyfriend, Josh Safran, was one of the fraud detectors. "I
can't believe the lengths she went to. Her e-mails were very
medically proficient. And everybody's lives were so messed up. It was
total drama." Although Safran was skeptical early on, he hesitated to
mention his doubts. "If she turned out to be sick after this, we were
horrible people."
The people who perpetrate these hoaxes don't usually consider the
ways they're harming others. One former Munchausen patient, a 40-year-
old computer technician on the West Coast, used to hurt herself and
pretend she'd been the victim of an attack or accident. "I called
them 'scenarios,'" she explains. "When I'd do something to attract
the paramedics and police, I got an adrenaline rush. I believe I got
addicted to it. At the time, it didn't occur to me I was hurting
anyone but myself."
For those who do not want to be victimized by such folks, however
sick they may or may not be, Dr. Feldman has developed a series of
cues for online detection. Some warning signs are posts that copy
textbook material or other online sites verbatim, and a series of
dramatic declines followed by miraculous recoveries. Be suspicious
when the person makes fantastic claims, he says, resists telephone
contact, or complains that the group is not supportive enough. Be
very suspicious if a "friend" or family member posts for the sick
person?displaying the same writing style and spelling errors.
The treatment for the support-group fakers is psychotherapy. The
treatment for their victims is...another support group. Victims of
Factitious Liars already has 42 members who post regularly about
their own victimization and brainstorm about how to get publicity and
funding to treat Munchausen. Cohen and Grabb are hoping to make a
documentary on the Munchausen phenomenon and have recently received a
substantial contribution from an individual donor.
Paradoxically, one of the issues Cohen and Grabb must confront is
that a member on their own site could be lying. "Look for
inconsistencies in the story over time," Cohen advises her group. "If
you become suspicious, e-mail me and let me know. For the most part,
we have to take what people say at face value. But let's all be aware
that we could get used and get emotionally attached to someone who is
an online liar."
I used to be pretty trusting, but the things I've seen people do to other people on the Internet over the last year especially have made me sadly cynical. I still think I'm vulnerable to a "friend" pulling a scam on me, but I don't swallow stories from relative strangers or just acquaintances anymore.
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