Planning hypochondria

By Gonzalo López Martí ? Creative director, etc. – LMMiami.com

  • The brand of creativity we sell at Madison Avenue is increasingly stale, flat footed, devoid of reflexes.
  • Clients are culprits of this reality too but, hey, a large chunk of our job description involves taking the fall for our clients’ mistakes.
  • The proverbial scapegoat.
  • We get paid for that too.
  • Anyhoo.
  • Creativity is dead.
  • Long live planning.
  • Or strategy.
  • Or whatever new name we want to use for the last shred of relevance our business has to offer.
  • The problem: planning hypochondria.
  • Fixing what’s not broken
  • Peddlers of solutions looking for imaginary problem.
  • Also known as strategic Munchhausen syndrome.
  • See, hypochondriacs believe that they are ill whereas people with factitious disorders do not.
  • It happens to the best of us but, sometimes, it can run amok and become en emotionally crippling mental disorder.
  • But have you heard of the so-called Munchausen syndrome?
  • It is slightly different from hypochondria.
  • People with Munchausen syndrome or FI (fabricated illness) will deliberately and repeatedly fake symptoms of medical problems.
  • There’s a more serious form of the disorder known as “Factitious disorder imposed on another” or Munchausen syndrome by proxy, in which a person fabricates illness for a dependent -a child, patient or elderly person- and puts them through unnecessary medical treatment.
  • It is a dangerous form of abuse with complex psychiatric roots.
  • Not unlike the uncontrollable urge to steal known as kleptomania, this “fetish” pushes individuals to constantly seek medication, surgery and what not, not only for themselves but also for loved ones under their care.
  • People who suffer from this disorder have been known to surreptitiously tamper with medical reports, bloodwork, urine samples, CT scans and the like to mislead specialists into prescribing treatments and surgery.
  • They can be dangerously manipulative.
  • Problem is, these folks are anything but dumb.
  • They can be very smart indeed and, sometimes, they reach positions of great power to satisfy their voraciously insane appetites.
  • Rings a bell?
  • If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

 

 

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