Forensic Psychology For Dummies (106 page)
Read Forensic Psychology For Dummies Online
Authors: David Canter
Rape trauma syndrome
Rape trauma syndrome (RTS) is typically associated with women rape victims but is potentially applicable to men. RTS has parallels to PTSD (see the earlier section ‘Post-traumatic stress disorder’), although its emphasis is rather different and less clearly defined. The use of RTS in court is to clarify why a rape victim delays reporting the assault, the claim being that this delay indicates some doubt about her role in the rape, even possibly blaming herself. This delay is claimed to be part of the psychological effects of the trauma of the attack, which often include depression, suicidal thoughts and general fear and anxiety.
An important point about all the psychological consequences of various stressors and traumas that result from rape is that they can also result from events that don’t involve obvious, extreme violence. Fear and profound psychological insult can be as traumatic, or even more so, as vicious physical aggression. Many studies show that stress relates to a lack, or loss, of personal control. As a consequence, situations that take the feelings of control away from the individual can have a significant impact on feelings of self-worth and the ability to be in charge of one’s life.
Munchausen syndrome by proxy
Munchausen syndrome
is where a person displays a relentless determination to obtain medical treatment from self-inflicted injuries or non-existent symptoms.
Munchausen syndrome by proxy
is a related behaviour, a very curious form of child abuse in which a parent (nearly always the mother) forces medical attention on her child frequently over an extended period of time without anything medical being wrong with the child at all. The child is used as a surrogate (or proxy) and may have to endure falsely reported symptoms (perhaps by adding substances to the child’s excreta to distort the laboratory tests) or even injuries or illnesses induced by the parent (such as starving the child or giving it toxic injections) in order to gain medical attention.
Experts don’t agree on the reasons for Munchausen syndrome by proxy behaviour, but the following characteristics have been identified as common to those diagnosed with this syndrome:
Mother is highly involved with her child and father is emotionally distant.
As these characteristics indicate, the parent can often be very convincing. As a result, in the cases of reporting false symptoms, sometimes the modifications of samples sent to the laboratory may be the first indicator that something non-medical is wrong with the child because the test results are so unusual.
The sorts of false symptoms reported by the parent commonly include: