title: [Infantile Munchausen syndrome. Etiology, diagnostic criteria, and treatment].
abstract: In this paper, we study a special kind of child abuse, the Münchhausen Syndrome by proxy, which consists of a group of diseases that some parents invent in their own children. These parents describe false symptoms of disease in their children, or manipulate the bodies of their children in order to cause alterations. Their purpose is that the doctor will carry out diagnostic tests and medical treatments with the children who really aren't ill. Our objective is to understand this syndrome, so we can report the factors that influence its appearance, study the diagnostic guidelines and the importance of doing a correct differential diagnostic with other real pathologies, and we analyze the preventive and therapeutic measures that health professionals must carry out in children and in their parents. When these professionals understand this syndrome they will be able to detect it before children are subjected to more unnecessary suffering. And, they will be able to prevent that these aggressions on children continue.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Psicología Educativa y de la Educación, Facultad de Psicología y CCEE, Universidad de Málaga, España.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Morales-Franco
authors.forename: M L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: de la Morena-Fernández
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009110:Munchausen Syndrome / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology / Q000628:therapy; D010290:Parents