In recent years, the Internet has emerged as a place to find 'virtual support groups' for a wide variety of medical disorders, providing invaluable sources of information and compassion for patients and families.
"However, there are people who misuse these groups, offering false stories of personal illness or crisis, a sort of Munchausen by Internet," says UAB psychiatrist Marc Feldman, M.D. "Problems can arise when people with real illness act on fraudulent recommendations from these attention seekers."
Feldman has tracked 21 such cases and presents four in a paper published this month in the Southern Medical Journal calling for increased vigilance by health care professionals for misleading information spread on the Internet.
Contact Bob Shepard, Media Relations, 205-934-8934/[email protected].
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