Dr. Phil Explains Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy
Dee Dee Blanchard told everyone her daughter, Gypsy Rose, was disabled and chronically ill, all of her life. She persuaded medical professionals her daughter was sick as well; convincing them to prescribe medicine Gypsy didn’t need, test her for ailments she didn’t have, and perform numerous unnecessary surgeries.
By age 24, Gypsy says she’d had enough of the torture she’d endured since she could remember, saying, “I just wanted that life to stop.”
One doctor did write his suspicions about Dee Dee in Gypsy’s medical file, but she says “Nothing ever came of it.”
Today, Gypsy Rose Blanchard is serving a 10-year prison term for her role in the stabbing death of Dee Dee Blanchard in June 2015.
Aided by experts, investigators soon determined that Dee Dee’s systematic abuse of Gypsy y was due to her own illness; a mental disorder commonly known as Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MbP). MbP is a form of abuse in which one person (usually a parent or caregiver), falsifies or creates illness, injury or disability in another (usually a child).
They do it, “to get sympathy and special attention for themselves,” says Dr. Phil.
Watch the video above as Dr. Phil explains Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Then tune in Tuesday for part one of a special two-part daytime exclusive as he interviews Gypsy Rose Blanchard from inside Missouri’s Chillicothe Correctional Center.
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Gypsy Rose Blanchard Says She Was 19 When She Found Evidence Of Her Mother’s Lies
