Munchausen by Internet

Munchausen by internet: What drives people to fake an illness online? is a story that was reported on the ABC this week about a new form of this much-reported syndrome. The Health Report on Radio National included an interview with Professor Marc Feldman, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Alabama and "the world's foremost authority on Munchausen syndrome".  He discussed the phenomenom of Munchausen and how the Internet version has been so gratifying for sufferers.  Professor Feldman also said it was very difficult to treat the condition.

Also interviewed on the Health Report was Taryn Harper Wright, a "Hoax Hunter", who has exposed many people who seek to elicit sympathy for fake tragedies on Facebook and other social media sites. A particularly interesting case was of Dana Dirr, who was a surgeon, pregnant and mother of eleven children, allegedly killed in a car crash one mother's day.  The husband's Facebook posts elicited thousands of sympathetic responses, but the whole story was eventually exposed as false.

You can listen to the interviews on the Health Report, or read the transcript here.