‘FORGIVENESS’

Gypsy Rose Blanchard Says Mom Was ‘Like an Addict’ Who Needed Help

Blanchard’s mother, Dee Dee, allegedly had Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a mental illness and form of child abuse where a guardian makes up an illness in order to get sympathy.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard has opened up to People magazine about her mother’s alleged Munchausen syndrome by proxy—a mental illness and form of child abuse where a guardian makes up illnesses in order to get sympathy—saying she is “really, really trying to come to a place of forgiveness for her, for myself and the situation.” Dee Dee Blanchard convinced people that her daughter had a slew of medical problems which weren’t real, prompting Gypsy Rose Blanchard and her then-boyfriend, Nick Godejohn, to hatch a plan to murder her. Gypsy Rose Blanchard was released from prison last week on parole after serving eight years of a 10-year sentence for the 2015 stabbing death of her mother. “Maybe it was like an addict with an impulse, and that it was not consciously malicious. And I think that helps me with coping and accepting what happened,” she said, talking about her mother’s alleged treatment of her. “I really feel like it was something psychological, that if she could have gotten therapy — she was diagnosed with bipolar and schizophrenia when she was a little younger, and so she was not taking medication for that... Perhaps, if maybe she was on her meds, maybe things would’ve been different.” Her story is featured on Lifetime’s upcoming show The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, which airs starting Jan. 5.