Citation

Kozlowska K, Foley S, Savage B. Fam. Process 2012; 51(4): 570-587.

Affiliation

Psychological Medicine, The Children's Hospital at Westmead, Westmead, NSW, Australia; Discipline of Psychiatry and Brain Dynamics Centre, University of Sydney Medical School.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Family Process Institute, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/famp.12000

PMID

23230986

Abstract

The term medically unexplained symptoms refers to a clinical presentation where the child's symptoms and impairment cannot be explained by any known organic pathology, and may include conversion disorders, somatoform pain disorders, factitious disorder, and factitious disorder by proxy. In this case study, we present our treatment of a 9-year-old girl with a 2-year history of medically unexplained abdominal cramping and vaginal discharge. During the 9 months that we worked with this family, we were never able to clarify in our own minds the source of the child's symptoms-that is, who was responsible for their induction or who was the instigator or maintainer of the exaggerated symptoms. Nor did we come to fully understand the function of the symptoms in the family system. Our case report does not answer either of these questions. Instead, we describe how we worked with the family despite the ongoing ambiguities as to why the symptoms were occurring and who was inducing them. The functional outcome was disappearance of symptoms, return to full school attendance, and improved parenting behavior.

Language: en