New 'Medical Child Abuse' Alarms Parents

It is a parent's instinct to follow a doctor's medical advice or not, until recently.

A so-called "medical child abuse", a situation wherein parents seek another medical professional for secondary advice, is now making headlines.

As discussed in a report by the NY Times, parents are being wrongly charged of denying a child of medical care because of seeking second opinion, thereby imposing conflict with the government's provision of rights to parents making their own decisions for their children.

In the mid-1990s, this kind of child abuse was coined and proved to be related to the Munchausen syndrome by proxy, where pediatric conditions were believed to be false, fabricated, or induced in order to provide unnecessary attention to a sick child who is being diagnosed, notes NY Times.

Healthline says that common victims are kids showing to have sleep apnea, malnutrition, attention deficit disorder, bleeding, or seizures.

With this comes the issue of parents withholding doctor's advice and seeking another's, labeling parents as "overly attentive", "highly demanding of second or third medical opinions", and tend to "overmedicalize" their children; the courts charge loving parents of denying the children of needed and proper medical advice.

NY Times notes that doctors are believed to acquire an ample amount of medical knowledge towards handling different patients' medical problems, yet parents have the say on what medical opinions they should take in and what methods of treatment are acceptable.

With this, it was emphasized that the government should not be involved between the disagreements in diagnosis or course of treatments, in addition to the parents' internal sensitivity on what their kid is going through.

To prevent the so-called medical child abuse, there should be transparency between the parents and the physician, especially on the child's medical and drug histories. According to a report by Huff Post Healthy Living, doctors should not be pressured on the parents' want to provide medicine to their sick children.

They should also warn parents about the effects of a certain drug, share to them safer treatment methods, and understand that alternative, second, and third opinions does not necessarily mean refuting first findings; this is simply opening up more possible options of diagnosis and treatment.