health

It is difficult to develop a typical profile for someone with a factitious disorder
because the reported cases are so few. An early study of Munchausen syndrome
found more women than men tended to have the disorder. The afflicted was
usually a young woman with poor psychosocial development. For most of
her life, she had been dependent on her mother, but her dependency needs
remained unfulfilled. She tended to have very little emotional support from
her father and her verbal skills were poor. This pattern implies that she is
looking to fulfill unmet needs but does not have the social skills necessary
to seek them in direct, adaptive manners. Gansen syndrome mostly afflicts
men, but this finding may be based on the prison context of most studies.
Most of those afflicted with Munchausen by proxy are young mothers.