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His father, Dr. Richard Asher, was a pioneering medical theorist, who first identified and named Munchausen’s Syndrome.

She was diagnosed as suffering from Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy, in which women use the ostensibly caring role of mother, nurse or nanny to inflict harm on children.

In 1951, British physician Richard Asher described three cases of what he called Munchausen’s syndrome — named after a fictional character who told absurd tall tales about his many adventures — in the Lancet.

This is one of those strange concepts like Munchausen’s syndrome, where you make yourself sick to get people to notice you.

I suffered a version of this so-called Medical Student Syndrome when I was taking my psychopathology courses: looking at all the symptoms of all the mental disorders listed in the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic bible, the DSM-IV, it was clear that not only was I paranoid schizophrenic, but all of my close friends and family most certainly had PTSD, OCD, borderline personality disorder or Munchausen's syndrome.