@article{ref1,
title="Doctor shopping with the child as proxy patient: a variant of child abuse",
journal="Journal of pediatrics",
year="1982",
author="Woollcott, P. Jr and Aceto, T. and Rutt, Candance and Bloom, M. and Glick, Rachel",
volume="101",
number="2",
pages="297-301",
abstract="Over a three-year period, we have seen in consultation four children whose mothers cited complaints referable to every organ system and which had persisted for many years. The parents had consulted a total of 99 physicians in eight states. Absence from school ranged from 40 to 200 days a year. Physical examinations of all patients and extensive and repeated laboratory studies were normal. On psychiatric examination the mothers exhibited paranoid thinking and a conviction of serious medical illness in their child which approached delusional proportions. They resisted psychiatric consultation and refused psychotherapy. The mother-child relationship was remarkably symbiotic, the two teen-age patients essentially voicing complaints which were indistinguishable from those reported by their mothers. The fathers invariably supported their wives' concerns. Subsequently, parents and children left treatment, continuing to &quot;doctor shop.&quot; Long-standing multisystem complaints in a child with normal growth and maturation are incompatible with any known significant organic disease, but suggest a serious emotional problem within the family. Further, parents who take such children from doctor to doctor are frequently disturbed themselves and may use an offspring as a proxy patient. An accurate diagnosis depends on careful history-taking from parents, patient, health professionals, and schools.<p /><p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0022-3476",
doi="",
url="http://dx.doi.org/"
}