One of our excellent APPs ,Alison Miller, recommended a movie this week called “Take Care of Maya.” It is available on Netflix.
While this is a one-sided account, it provides a well-documented perspective of a family accused of medical child abuse. It is probably a good idea for anyone involved from the medical side of child abuse to watch this movie; it will help them understand a family’s, often awful, experience with this process and may help with providing better care.
Here’s the trailer: Take Care of Maya (1:30)
Related blog posts:
- How Helpful is a Referral to Child Protective Services
- Have you seen Medical Child Abuse? (aka Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy)
- A Cautionary Tale –Is it Medical Child Abuse?
gutsandgrowth 
Unfortunately media will tend to be a little one sided in cases like this, because of patient privacy. I’m not saying the Netflix story is not true, only that the public will likely not hear of the numerous stories that would present the opposite narrative.
One exception is a case from UK, reported beautifully in a BBC podcast:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0fhzh45
That story could be the flipside of the medical abuse cases.
Spoiler alert for the BBC show. It was probably possible to report because the patient passed away. It is an outcome we try to prevent as physicians and medical providers. Indeed, there is a risk of causing unnecessary anguish and family disruption and I’m sure no physician or provider will wish to cause that. Unfortunately again, sometimes the authorities can be unpredictable in these matters, either over reacting or on the other hand not acting with enough force.