 Contributing Mental Illnesses
Narcissism (Napoleon Syndrome)
Stockholm Syndrome (Patty Hearst Syndrome)
Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy
Narcissism
There is a big correlation between narcissistic personality disorder and PAS. Narcisissm (Napoleon Syndrome) is where the perpetrating parent craves the attention they gain by harassing the targeted parent. Although they seem to be doing everything they possibly can to sever contact between the victimized parent and their children, actually it is the attention that is gained that they crave.
They will do anything they can to make themselves the center of attention, especially if they can portray themselves as the victim. Many times this leads to a barrage of false reports of child abuse to police, DCF and unwarranted hospital visits alleging child abuse by the targeted parent.
Perpetrating parents engage well-meaning individuals to join them in their assault by encouraging the filing of abuse reports. Their abuse stories seem all the more credible when the child has been coached to back up the perpetrator. Sadly, most people do not realize that children naturally love their parents, even if they are abused. And because of fear, a child will protect their abuser. Rarely will a child willingly expose their abuser.
Stockholm Syndrome (Patty Hearst Syndrome)
Out of survival children may choose to side with the perpetrator against the targeted parent. Victims have to concentrate on emotional and physical survival. The perpetrator becomes their captor and in order to stay safe, the children will become dependent on the captor and do anything to please them. They focus on the captor's kindnesses, not his/her acts of brutality. Battered women assume that the abuser is a good man whose actions stem from problems that she can help him solve.
Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy
Some cases of PAS, especially those with false allegations of abuse, may have important features in common with Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSP) in which parents fulfill their needs vicariously by presenting their child as ill (23). In cases of "classical" MSP, parents repeatedly take their children to doctors for unnecessary, often painful tests and treatments which the physician is induced to provide based on the parent's misrepresentations. source
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