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SHE claims that she clearly remembers getting pregnant, considering an abortion and having a miscarriage last June.
But when her then boyfriend hired a private investigator to check this out, the outcome shocked them both.
Jane (not her real name), 22, says her boyfriend told her there were no records of her at the hospital.
Now she thinks she’s suffering from a condition known as “false memory syndrome”.
Patients with this condition believe strongly in certain events that never happened, said Dr Thong Jiunn Yew, a consultant psychiatrist at Nobel Psychological Wellness Clinic. And this condition may affect their identity and relationships, he added.
Dr Thong and other psychiatrists told The New Paper that false memory syndrome is not a medical illness in itself. Instead, it is a symptom which might point to some mental illness.
In Jane’s case, the condition cost her. Her 24-year-old boyfriend broke up with her.
“He thinks I’m lying to him,” she said.
Confused
Jane, a third-year student at the National University of Singapore (NUS), is still perplexed as to how she could remember the details of the pregnancy and miscarriage so vividly, when nothing of the sort happened.
She said: “I really remembered that I was five weeks’ pregnant then. Whatever I believed was so real.”
She claims she told her boyfriend of two years about her being pregnant a fortnight before the “miscarriage”.
“He sort of expected it, given the kind of relationship we had,” she said.
She said they had unprotected sex every time they met, four or five times a week.
It was not possible to verify her account with her ex-boyfriend, because she would not agree to let us meet him.
Recalling the “fateful” day on June 14 last year, Jane claimed that she was on her way to a holiday job as a sales and marketing officer at a hotel in town.
She told The New Paper: “I took bus number 190 to Orchard.
“Then suddenly I felt an acute abdominal pain and I was bleeding. I went to Mount Elizabeth Hospital as it was the nearest and it was an emergency.”
She wouldn’t say what further “memories” she had of what happened at the hospital, but she told her boyfriend that she had a miscarriage.
It turned out later that there were no records of that, though she had indeed taken half a day’s leave on that day.
There seemed to be another hospital-related incident which Jane has apparently talked about, but which also may never have occurred.
Jane’s friend, 22, who is also a student at NUS, said Jane had told her boyfriend that she had a blood clot in her brain a few years ago.
But The New Paper could not get any details about this incident.
Jane’s boyfriend had wanted to go with her for an abortion, said the friend.
She said: “He initially wanted to go with her to settle the abortion issue. But before they managed to go for the abortion, she said she had a miscarriage.”
The boyfriend “felt something was amiss” and hired a private investigator to check out the truth of both incidents.
Jane’s friend said he spent quite a “costly sum” on a private investigator.
“He (the boyfriend) told me that she (Jane) might not have consciously tried to lie, but she might have done it to get his attention.”
The friend also said that if Jane was questioned about her memories, after a point she wouldn’t be able to say more.
“She can tell you some vague things, but when you probe further, she will realise that she can’t remember exactly how it happened,” the friend said.
Jane also sought help from a friend who is a medical student to help her check her records at the hospital.
And indeed, there were none, which means she was never pregnant and never had an abortion or miscarriage.
Asked why she didn’t go to the hospital herself to check, and needed a friend to do it, Jane had no reply.
When Jane shared her experience with another friend, the friend suggested that she might suffer from false memory syndrome.
Following that friend’s advice, Jane sought help at the NUS Counselling and Psychological Services. She claimed she saw a psychologist there in January this year and was referred to a private psychiatrist in March.
The psychiatrist she is seeing declined to comment about her case.
According to Jane, she was prescribed a medicine “to make her feel happier” but there is no conclusive diagnosis of her condition.
“Even if it is not medically proven, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect my life. I can’t live my life with this false memory syndrome,” she said.
False memory symptom of mental illness
FALSE memory syndrome is not a medical illness, said psychiatrists The New Paper spoke to. Instead, it is a symptom which might point to mental illness.
Dr Simon Siew, a consultant psychiatrist at Mount Elizabeth Medical Centre, said: "It is a result of mental illness, so they (patients) believe in issues or events that are not true."
Dr Siew, who has been in practice for 27 years, said that globally, about 1 per cent of the population get this kind of symptom.
One in 10 of the patients he sees has this symptom, he said.
Dr Thong Jiunn Yew, a consultant psychiatrist, said he usually sees falsification of memory in people with schizophrenia and mood disorders such as depression.
Disorders
Dr Adrian Wang, a Gleneagles Medical Centre's consultant psychiatrist, has also seen such cases, though rarely. And he said most of them were later found to be lying.
Dr Thong, who practices at Nobel Psychological Wellness Clinic, said this condition arises due to various reasons.
He said: "Firstly, in normal people, sometimes there is difficulty in deciding whether the events have really occurred or whether they were dreamt.
"Secondly, normal people occasionally modify the past to some degree. They modify the memories in relation to their general attitude at the moment."
He also said that the less critical someone is about himself or herself, the higher the level of falsification of memories.
"The degree of falsification is inversely related to the degree of insight and self criticism of the individual."
In some cases, the falsified memories are more traumatic and complex, he said.
"Patients who are severely depressed may give an excessively gloomy childhood history of abuse, poverty and neglect."
Dr Siew added that patients who have a psychotic illness such as schizophrenia may have "what we call delusional memories".
"Here, the patient recalls an event that is obviously delusional in nature - it never happened - but the patient falsely believes it happened," he said.
An example of this would be a patient with schizophrenia who is deluded that the government is monitoring him, so as to eventually imprison him.
The patient then "remembers" that when he was a young child, his teachers were also monitoring his movements using hidden cameras in the classroom and the toilets, he explained.
[email protected]
This article was first published in The New Paper.
But when her then boyfriend hired a private investigator to check this out, the outcome shocked them both.
Jane (not her real name), 22, says her boyfriend told her there were no records of her at the hospital.
Now she thinks she’s suffering from a condition known as “false memory syndrome”.
Patients with this condition believe strongly in certain events that never happened, said Dr Thong Jiunn Yew, a consultant psychiatrist at Nobel Psychological Wellness Clinic. And this condition may affect their identity and relationships, he added.
Dr Thong and other psychiatrists told The New Paper that false memory syndrome is not a medical illness in itself. Instead, it is a symptom which might point to some mental illness.
In Jane’s case, the condition cost her. Her 24-year-old boyfriend broke up with her.
“He thinks I’m lying to him,” she said.
Confused
Jane, a third-year student at the National University of Singapore (NUS), is still perplexed as to how she could remember the details of the pregnancy and miscarriage so vividly, when nothing of the sort happened.
She said: “I really remembered that I was five weeks’ pregnant then. Whatever I believed was so real.”
She claims she told her boyfriend of two years about her being pregnant a fortnight before the “miscarriage”.
“He sort of expected it, given the kind of relationship we had,” she said.
She said they had unprotected sex every time they met, four or five times a week.
It was not possible to verify her account with her ex-boyfriend, because she would not agree to let us meet him.
Recalling the “fateful” day on June 14 last year, Jane claimed that she was on her way to a holiday job as a sales and marketing officer at a hotel in town.
She told The New Paper: “I took bus number 190 to Orchard.
“Then suddenly I felt an acute abdominal pain and I was bleeding. I went to Mount Elizabeth Hospital as it was the nearest and it was an emergency.”
She wouldn’t say what further “memories” she had of what happened at the hospital, but she told her boyfriend that she had a miscarriage.
It turned out later that there were no records of that, though she had indeed taken half a day’s leave on that day.
There seemed to be another hospital-related incident which Jane has apparently talked about, but which also may never have occurred.
Jane’s friend, 22, who is also a student at NUS, said Jane had told her boyfriend that she had a blood clot in her brain a few years ago.
But The New Paper could not get any details about this incident.
Jane’s boyfriend had wanted to go with her for an abortion, said the friend.
She said: “He initially wanted to go with her to settle the abortion issue. But before they managed to go for the abortion, she said she had a miscarriage.”
The boyfriend “felt something was amiss” and hired a private investigator to check out the truth of both incidents.
Jane’s friend said he spent quite a “costly sum” on a private investigator.
“He (the boyfriend) told me that she (Jane) might not have consciously tried to lie, but she might have done it to get his attention.”
The friend also said that if Jane was questioned about her memories, after a point she wouldn’t be able to say more.
“She can tell you some vague things, but when you probe further, she will realise that she can’t remember exactly how it happened,” the friend said.
Jane also sought help from a friend who is a medical student to help her check her records at the hospital.
And indeed, there were none, which means she was never pregnant and never had an abortion or miscarriage.
Asked why she didn’t go to the hospital herself to check, and needed a friend to do it, Jane had no reply.
When Jane shared her experience with another friend, the friend suggested that she might suffer from false memory syndrome.
Following that friend’s advice, Jane sought help at the NUS Counselling and Psychological Services. She claimed she saw a psychologist there in January this year and was referred to a private psychiatrist in March.
The psychiatrist she is seeing declined to comment about her case.
According to Jane, she was prescribed a medicine “to make her feel happier” but there is no conclusive diagnosis of her condition.
“Even if it is not medically proven, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect my life. I can’t live my life with this false memory syndrome,” she said.
False memory symptom of mental illness
FALSE memory syndrome is not a medical illness, said psychiatrists The New Paper spoke to. Instead, it is a symptom which might point to mental illness.
Dr Simon Siew, a consultant psychiatrist at Mount Elizabeth Medical Centre, said: "It is a result of mental illness, so they (patients) believe in issues or events that are not true."
Dr Siew, who has been in practice for 27 years, said that globally, about 1 per cent of the population get this kind of symptom.
One in 10 of the patients he sees has this symptom, he said.
Dr Thong Jiunn Yew, a consultant psychiatrist, said he usually sees falsification of memory in people with schizophrenia and mood disorders such as depression.
Disorders
Dr Adrian Wang, a Gleneagles Medical Centre's consultant psychiatrist, has also seen such cases, though rarely. And he said most of them were later found to be lying.
Dr Thong, who practices at Nobel Psychological Wellness Clinic, said this condition arises due to various reasons.
He said: "Firstly, in normal people, sometimes there is difficulty in deciding whether the events have really occurred or whether they were dreamt.
"Secondly, normal people occasionally modify the past to some degree. They modify the memories in relation to their general attitude at the moment."
He also said that the less critical someone is about himself or herself, the higher the level of falsification of memories.
"The degree of falsification is inversely related to the degree of insight and self criticism of the individual."
In some cases, the falsified memories are more traumatic and complex, he said.
"Patients who are severely depressed may give an excessively gloomy childhood history of abuse, poverty and neglect."
Dr Siew added that patients who have a psychotic illness such as schizophrenia may have "what we call delusional memories".
"Here, the patient recalls an event that is obviously delusional in nature - it never happened - but the patient falsely believes it happened," he said.
An example of this would be a patient with schizophrenia who is deluded that the government is monitoring him, so as to eventually imprison him.
The patient then "remembers" that when he was a young child, his teachers were also monitoring his movements using hidden cameras in the classroom and the toilets, he explained.
[email protected]
This article was first published in The New Paper.
