MORVEN McDADE
M.E. SUFFERER
To start off with I had a very sore throat and headaches and I used to feel dizzy. And then
after I'd had the illness for a while I felt sick practically all the time. I used to feel all weak
and I'd feel all sore everywhere.
M.HILL
After seeing several doctors Helen McDade found it impossible to get a diagnosis of M.E.
But Morven's symptoms became worse. Mrs McDade was then astonished to hear her
doctors simply didn't believe the condition existed in children.
HELEN McDADE
She had so severe abdominal pain. On two occasions at night I called the doctor out and we
have never called the doctor outside hours, never. And the second time the doctor (who was
sympathetic) said "Well she should go to hospital".
M.HILL
Unknown to her the junior doctor who saw Morven for pain relief had noted Helen herself
may have a relatively new and extremely rare condition called Munchhausen Syndrome by
Proxy. The doctor was effectively asking if she was deliberately making her daughter ill, or
getting Morven to make it all up.
HELEN McDADE
MORVEN'S MOTHER
Well I was very angry because there was no indication that I was making things up. You
know, my daughter was seriously unwell and I didn't see why they could have come to this
conclusion. They hadn't investigated our family at all, and talked to her about it or anything,
and I realised that it was very damaging, from our point of view, of trying to get help for
Morven's symptoms.
M.HILL
Even though Morven has improved enough to return to school, her mother is still trying to get
the Munchhausen's reference removed from her medical records.
HELEN McDADE
There's no more serious allegation can really be made against a mother. It's very damaging.
You can't refute it because it's not out there in the open. It's in there in the notes for other
doctors to see it, and it's only by accident that I knew that and tried to get it removed.
M.HILL
Mrs McDade then saw Nigel Speight, the doctor who most strongly disagrees with the
psychological approach. He showed her the junior doctor's letter suggesting Munchhausen's
which he believes should never have been used.
DOCTOR SPEIGHT
It's like being committed to a psychiatric hospital when you're not mad. It's a very easy
diagnosis to throw around. It's a very difficult one to disprove if you're the person labelled
with it.
M.HILL
Panorama's survey shows 15% of families were told that their psychological problems were
causing their child's illness. It also reveals that a high proportion of parents are branded with
Munchhausen Syndrome by Proxy. The figure stands at 4%. This represents one in eighteen
families surveyed. Nationally, the Syndrome affects just one in a hundred thousand families.
A year ago Doctor Prendergast, the psychiatrist whose opinions have influenced doctors
before, gave a talk at a Scottish hospital. Helen McDade went along with her local campaign
group. They were shocked by what they heard.
HELEN McDADE
The whole lecture was very jocular really. There were practically no facts, scientific studies
involved at all, but he tended to make jokes about things which if you stopped and analysed
them you would say that's a) not funny and b) surely that suggests this child is really ill. So
for instance he had a slide, he put a slide overhead up of a little girl dressed in a woollen
winter coat and a hat and gloves. And he said "This is how this girl turned up to my surgery
on a sunny May day dressed like a granny" and everybody laughed. And anyone with any
sense would say well surely she was ill.
DOCTOR PRENDERGAST
I have got a slide of a girl with a coat on, on a warm day, and its pointing to the incongruency
Now the difficulty is that incongruency is very mixed up with humour, humour is just a
position of incongruency. It's not making fun, she wasn't identifiable. Are these the M.E.
Action people who sneaked into one of my lectures in Scotland?
M.HILL
That's right. Isn't this offensive though to say.. you know.. couldn't she perhaps have been
feeling very cold, one of the symptoms of M.E., that's why she wore..
DOCTOR PRENDERGAST
It's not offensive, it's not offensive. She did look like a granny.
M.HILL
Doctor Prendergast was asked what he'd do if parents resisted psychiatric treatment. Helen
McDade said the psychiatrist was robust about invoking legal action.
HELEN McDADE
He said "I'm not a believer in using care orders. I think you should just go straight to the
High Court and in that way you have someone else looking out for them" so what he was
really saying was his aim, if there was any conflict with the parents, was to get a High Court
order. This is not a fatal illness and yet he was talking about taking orders, removing parental
rights from people.
M.HILL
And it was to the High Court where Doctor Prendergast went with Social Services just over a
year ago to enforce their view that he should treat a 16 year old boy against the wishes of the
patient and his parents. The teenager had no choice as the full force of the law had been
invoked. We can't identify the boy for legal reasons. His parents were too afraid to talk to us
because of legal restrictions placed on them. In 1996 the 13 year old boy's health
deteriorated. His local consultant diagnosed M.E. and brought in Doctor Prendergast for a
second opinion. Doctor Prendergast recommended his programme of rehabilitation aimed at
increasing his mobility. It is claimed the exercise made him worse. The local doctors then
sent the boy to Great Ormond Street for a further assessment. On seeing the unit his parents
wouldn't let him be treated there. The doctors continued to push for treatment with Doctor
Prendergast. His parents went to another consultant for a second opinion.
DOCTOR FRANKLIN
He complained that he couldn't see, that he couldn't move. He was lying in bed and he
couldn't stand; that he couldn't eat, he couldn't feed himself; that he couldn't think properly;
he couldn't look at television; he couldn't read; that he was being totally.. he had become
totally cut off by the illness in his view.
M.HILL
By the summer of 1997 the boy was being tube fed in his local hospital as he couldn't
swallow. Local doctors were so convinced he had to be treated at Great Ormond Street they
were prepared to push for this with Social Services, even if it went against the parents'
wishes.
DOCTOR PRENDERGAST
Doctors have an obligation to discuss anxieties about children whose development may be
being avoidably impaired. We discuss at our planning meetings with Social Services, Social
Services decide whether or not they agree with the concern, and if they do, then they go to
court and then the court decides.
M.HILL
After six months of legal action a High Court judge overruled these parents' wishes and
compelled the 16 year old to be treated by Doctor Prendergast. They boy was made a ward of
court and the state became his legal guardian.
DOCTOR FRANKLIN
I think in Britain in the 1990s it's quite a ridiculous situation. I mean this is not a boy who
was going to create enormous damage to anybody, or cause a lot of trouble, so why go to
those extreme and draconian measures to lock him up and to treat him in a way that wasn't
going to make much difference.
M.HILL
What do you think of that?
DOCTOR FRANKLIN
I think it's horrendous. I mean I wouldn't be part of it.
M.HILL
And neither would his father. He decided to take the law into his own hands. He absconded
to Europe with his son. Interpol was alerted.
DOCTOR FRANKLIN
The police turned up on my doorstep one morning and said did I know where he was and I
didn't at that particular time. I think if somebody forces you to do something that you really
believe is not going to help you, your efforts are to escape, and I've met it in other places
where parents have suddenly got up and moved house out of the county to get out of the range
of the people who are expecting them to have treatment which they didn't want.
M.HILL
His father returned alone to give himself up to the UK authorities leaving his son with his
mother abroad. He was immediately arrested for contempt of court and was put in the cells.
He was told that the child would have to be taken back to Great Ormond Street by the end of
the week. The boy's mother immediately brought her son home. At the crack of dawn, far
earlier than the family had been told, the mother was wakened by police officers and social
workers who'd come to take her child to Great Ormond Street. She wasn't allowed in the
ambulance with her son.
DOCTOR FRANKLIN
We have been taught for years in paediatrics that the parents should be involved at all stages,
and that to exclude them in the way that the parents were excluded, only allowed to visit twice
a week, seemed to me a bit extreme, even for a boy who may have psychological problems.
It's only a small step away from saying 'this is a Munchhausen situation, the parents are
actually making this child ill', which from my assessment of the family was not true at all.
M.HILL
It was two months into his stay at the Mildred Creek Unit when the 16 year old made friends
with another patient who was also suffering from M.E.
VANESSA BULL
M.E. SUFFERER
When I arrived at Great Ormond Street he'd already been there for a couple of months, and
obviously was very unhappy about the situation. But the doctors weren't listening to him and
weren't taking his views into account that it wasn't a psychological illness, he wasn't
depressed. He was perfectly happy at home and they weren't listening to him and wouldn't
take into account his physical problems and wouldn't believe he wasn't making them up.
M.HILL
As Vanessa got to know the boy, she began to realise just how much his health had
deteriorated.
VANESSA
He'd been very into sports, academically a high flyer, good social group, good friends,
enjoyed school, and very much the same as me in those respects. Then everything had gone
and it was very obvious that if he'd been able to get up and walk he would have done. But the
nurses didn't see that. They saw him as being awkward and stubborn.
M.HILL
The boy had to spend seven months at Great Ormond Street. He was given Doctor
Prendergast's rehabilitation programme which involved staff regularly attempting to get him
up and about. He also had to sit with anorexic patients at meal times.
VANESSA
He was put on a Zimmer frame to try and help him because when he went in he was able to
walk. As he was in he got worse and worse and they put him in a Zimmer frame and as he
was sort of totally exhausted, his knees scraping the floor, his chin sort of touching the bar,
when the consultant said to him "Do you know how much your bed is costing us?".
M.HILL
The boy wasn't allowed to see his own consultant, but Doctor Franklin has listened to tapes he
made of his experience whilst in Great Ormond Street.
DOCTOR FRANKLIN
He was extremely upset. I listened to a number of tapes which he dictated while he was in
hospital. And he was very upset by the whole thing. They were trying to get him to get up
and do things. They were threatening him in all sorts of ways about him going down into the
town and so on which he found totally unrealistic. He, I think, really hated the whole regime
and therefore didn't cooperate at all, so that there was no real, if you like, engagement
between him and the medical people who were there.
M.HILL
After being separated for 8 months the child's parents successfully went back to the courts and
regained wardship. We can't report what happened at that hearing or what conclusions the
judge came to as the proceedings happened behind closed doors. Doctor Nigel Speight has
been to visit the boy since his experiences.
DOCTOR SPEIGHT
He is suffering from severe M.E. and posttraumatic stress disorder as a result of his
experiences in that hospital, and he has lost total faith in the medical profession.
M.HILL
How can you be so sure of that?
DOCTOR SPEIGHT
Even though his parents had great faith in me personally for the support I'd given them, they
had great difficulty conveying that faith, and because I was a doctor he was very reluctant to
even see me. He eventually consented to talk to me briefly and I respected his wish not to
speak to me for too long.
M.HILL
What sort of symptoms was he displaying?
DOCTOR SPEIGHT
Well he's still bedridden, lying in a darkened room, and he still has flashbacks for the time he
was in that unit, and he still cries if people open the door, and if he hears that a social worker
is going to visit the house he goes into a very regressed state.
M.HILL
While the child no longer receives treatment at Great Ormond Street, Doctor Prendergast
stands by his approach.