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New study finds factor that dictates level of pain and fatigue in ME.........*******!!!!!!!

Countrygirl

Senior Member
Messages
5,425
Location
UK
Isn't it reassuring that that such understanding is shown for our psychologically-generated condition and ...........oh, thank goodness!........they hope to treat us.

................and there I was thinking we are just lazy bsssssss........now I know where I have been going wrong for 30 years.........................lower your personal standards and you will be well..............good....innit?

Thank you to the UK's 'leading' o_O ME patients' association, Action for ME for posting this valuable study and giving us hope for effective treatment at last.:aghhh:




http://www.actionforme.org.uk/get-informed/news/research-news/self-critical-perfectionism




Full Title: Self-critical perfectionism and its relationship to fatigue and pain in the daily flow of life in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome.

Authors: Kempke S, Luyten P, Claes S, Goossens L, Bekaert P, Van Wambeke P, Van Houdenhove B.

Publication: Psychological Medicine

Publication Date: 30th August 2012

Source: Department of Psychology, University of Leuven, Belgium.

BACKGROUND:

Research suggests that the personality factor of self-critical or maladaptive perfectionism may be implicated in chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). However, it is not clear whether self-critical perfectionism (SCP) also predicts daily symptoms in CFS. Method In the present study we investigated whether SCP predicted fatigue and pain over a 14-day period in a sample of 90 CFS patients using a diary method approach. After completing the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ) as a measure of SCP, patients were asked each day for 14 days to complete Visual Analogue Scales (VAS) of fatigue, pain and severity of depression. Data were analysed using multilevel analysis.

RESULTS:

The results from unconditional models revealed considerable fluctuations in fatigue over the 14 days, suggesting strong temporal variability in fatigue. By contrast, pain was relatively stable over time but showed significant inter-individual differences. Congruent with expectations, fixed-effect models showed that SCP was prospectively associated with higher daily fatigue and pain levels over the 14-day period, even after controlling for levels of depression.

CONCLUSIONS:

This is the first study to show that SCP predicts both fatigue and pain symptoms in CFS in the daily course of life. Hence, therapeutic interventions aimed at targeting SCP should be considered in the treatment of CFS patients with such features
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
I think there is another thread on this. Its more babble, but they keep changing the babble. "Oh yes, we know the old babble is wrong, but you haven't disproved the new babble!"

Did it ever occur to them that when we get sick, and our life sucks, and nothing works, and we get criticised from everywhere including doctors, that some of us might become more self critical? Cause and effect is not the same as association.

Bye, Alex
 

SilverbladeTE

Senior Member
Messages
3,043
Location
Somewhere near Glasgow, Scotland
therapeutic, so they can make more mooney off the pharma corps!
yes indeedy see how many top psychiatrist in last few years have bene invovled in brobery, corruption, criminality involving such stuff!
Wonderful how a man who swears to uphold Human dignity of life, can make couple of million dollars to lie about medicines that could sicken or even kill his patients if wrongly used.
I maybe opposed ot execution but I sure feel the "olde Judge Roy Bean" coming on at times! :p
"Probatium? My arsium! CRUCIFXIUM!"
(old billy connolly joke, hehe) :rofl:

Alex
yeah when yer life suddenly turns roudn, bites you on the arse and you are lying there wondering why the hell did your body suddenly stab you in the back, you do tend ot get a tad...testy :p

I wasn't having any kind of life crisis, I was happy as one can reaosnably be in life and then suddenly, with no warning, bar nasty flu liek bug and some hellish damp proofing chemicals in my house, BAMMO!!
Bent down over in an alley way and WHOOSH!!! The mighty Proboscis of Myanalgic Enfekeritis thust itself DEEPLY into my bowels, right up to the brain.

Until then, I had always assumed Chtulhu was merely fantasy, a deranged horrors of novels!!
But NO!! the bugger had obviously crept out of Deep R'yleh and SHAGGED me
WHy, I know not. It may have been my handsome rugged good looks...if you viewed me in one of the funny mirrors in a circus...
Could have been because I was fit and clever...true! true I say!
Or maybe he knew I was a threat to his spawn, the Antichrist of the medical world: Simon "Nyarlothep" Wessely!
And so, he threw me a "wobbler" to take me out of the game!
Yup, it all makes sense now! :alien:

Pic = Cthulhu's world Tour, 2011, USA leg ;)

OG-US-TOUR.jpg


(for those not getting the humour, Cthulhu's a mythical horror deity, super-critter much mentioned in books and games :p)
 

Holmsey

Senior Member
Messages
286
Location
Scotland, UK
Does this really count as research? How many other cronic pain illnessess have they analysed in a similar manner, how many other illnesses for that matter?
Anytime I read something like this I try to guage it against my own experience, I did tent toward perfectionism pre illness, but then I know others, not ill, who were even more so. Since becomming ill I've had to drop my standards, for instance I used to run six miles on a whim, now I satisfy myself with being able to walk from the car to work, after five years I've pretty much accepted the situation, are they suggesting I'm trying to walk more perfectly? Or is the suggestion that since I can't run to work I'm beating myself up and by some miraculous pathway which is never explained causing actual pain through my mental beating myself up?
Why do these researchers just get to ignore every paper ever published which details the biological abnormalities as if they're either all lies or all mistaken but 'were just to polite to say so' and continue to regurgitate this drivel, I'll answer my own question, because there's an appetite for it, an appetite to save money on the part of whichever enterprise displays that appetite.

Thanks for listening, now I'm going back to practice thinking which will increase the pain in my fingers because they're not as young as they used to be and one of them pointed at me earlier...grrrr!

Anyone wonder what they tell their kids when they say, mummy what did you do today?
 
Messages
646
Did it ever occur to them that when we get sick, and our life sucks, and nothing works, and we get criticised from everywhere including doctors, that some of us might become more self critical? Cause and effect is not the same as association.

Probably yes that has occurred to them - Self-Critical Perfectionism, Stress Generation, and Stress Sensitivity in Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Relationship with Severity of Depression but that will not impair their argument that psychodynamic therapy will help, in fact it would only strengthen their position that pyschological factors have causative or maintaining effects in the (cough) 'illness role'. We have to remember that the 'psych' perspective is a whole world view and any argumet made from within that world is (for those on the inside) unarguable from the outside. What is interesting though is that although not made explicit - UK practioners like Sharp, Wessely and White belong to a school that has long rejected the European school of Freud and Jung inspired treatments like psychodynamic therapy. My guess is that the vulnerability of overweening psychiatrism lies in exposing these internal divisions.

IVI
 

peggy-sue

Senior Member
Messages
2,623
Location
Scotland
What were the measures of bias towards confirming pre-existing delusions and the (anticipated :devil: ) low scores on the personality factor of open-mindedness of the researchers?

How do these measures correleate with the conclusions?
 

Holmsey

Senior Member
Messages
286
Location
Scotland, UK
Just in case it doesn't make it past moderation on the biggest ME patients forum -

Posted on Action for ME as a comment on this 'study', I choke on the word.

Self critical perfectionism, first time I've come across this term, is it a recognised condition? Does it constitute a psychological illness? Or is it just a term someone burning a budget has decided to give to a scale which they or their peer group have coined in isolation.
Introspection and performance analysis are surely a clear part of the human condition without which we would neither strive nor survive.
For anyone who has been used to one level of performance to find any factor, internal or external which then limits that performance there is going to be frustration, I wonder for instance how many paraplegics have beaten their legs in temper.
So this study takes a group of sick individuals and finds that there's more frustration among the more severely effected...they had to research that, seriously someone spent money to grasp that!
More mind boggling are the conclusions, from having established nothing more than an association between self criticism and an inability to function due to pain and / or fatigue, that is self evident to anyone caring to think about it for more than a minute, they conclude that 'SCP predicts both fatigue and pain'.
Why is this two way association so presented, why was the conclusion not 'fatigue and pain predict the level of SPC'?
I would offer firstly that this quote from the paper, along with the discipline of the researchers would be predictive of the favoured view of the association 'Congruent with expectations'. The study was entered into with expectations on the part of those performing the study and to conclude that pain and fatigue were predictive of the level of self criticism is to acknowledge that pain and fatigue, two things outside their domain are causative.
Secondly I would offer that 'therapeutic interventions aimed at targeting SCP' a psychiatrist can sell, therapeutic interventions which fix the biological abnormalities reported in over 4000 papers, and which have to be ignored in order to drink this hog wash, are somewhat out of their grasp.
I predict that if you fix the real pain and real fatigue then you'll find that the patient no longer requires the community acquired self critical crutch.
 
Messages
13,774
The title of this thread seems unnecessarily dramatic. It goes well beyond what the researchers claimed, and it's likely to end up misleading people in a way which could be upsetting. There was already another thread on this paper anyway.
 

L'engle

moogle
Messages
3,187
Location
Canada
Thanks for posting but could I suggest that when people are thinking of their thread titles they make a note of whether they are being sarcastic or not? I thought maybe this was going to be about a study that was helpful. I tend to avoid the threads that are actually focusing on the other kind of study because it is stressful to read about. In this case I ended up going to the thread anyway and then finding out what it was about. Thanks!
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
Probably yes that has occurred to them - Self-Critical Perfectionism, Stress Generation, and Stress Sensitivity in Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Relationship with Severity of Depression but that will not impair their argument that psychodynamic therapy will help, in fact it would only strengthen their position that pyschological factors have causative or maintaining effects in the (cough) 'illness role'. We have to remember that the 'psych' perspective is a whole world view and any argumet made from within that world is (for those on the inside) unarguable from the outside. What is interesting though is that although not made explicit - UK practioners like Sharp, Wessely and White belong to a school that has long rejected the European school of Freud and Jung inspired treatments like psychodynamic therapy. My guess is that the vulnerability of overweening psychiatrism lies in exposing these internal divisions.

IVI

Hi IVI, I am aware of these issues, but I argue (and will in future blogs) that Sharpe, Wessely and White still worship at the alter of Freud, all they have done is change the doctrine. The underlying presumptions are the same, its just the little story they tell with it that has changed, including the tales they tell of how they can help. In particular, the issue of it being unassailable by external logic or facts is a hallmark of pseudoscience that has been repeatedly leveled at Freudian psychotherapy.

I don't know if its always unarguable from the outside. Many have realized the issues. Many more don't bother investigating, and so reason from ignorance. What percentage are hard core believers? I am hoping not many, but I worry that its most of them.

Bye, Alex
 

Marco

Grrrrrrr!
Messages
2,386
Location
Near Cognac, France
Bingo

I'm definitely a 'self-critical perfectionist' but then I always have been and never experienced fatigue or pain or any other symptoms until I became ill.

What exactly are they saying? Are all people with ME/CFS self-critical perfectionists? What is the prevalence in the general population? Where's the control group? If, as with me, this is a stable trait, why do fatigue levels fluctuate, is it context dependent?

Is this trait necessarily a bad thing?

The literature actually suggests that perfectionism itself is not the problem. It can push individuals to be more productive. What apears to be problematic is the discrepency between having high standards and the ability to achieve them :

http://www.rps.psu.edu/sep96/almost.html

Given our much reduced capacities it would be somewhat unsurprising if some of us even without perfectionist tendencies felt distressed by being unable to meet our obligations and increasingly distressed when fatigue and pain were worse. I'm sure this is true in any chronically ill group

In what way was this study 'prospective'?
 

Holmsey

Senior Member
Messages
286
Location
Scotland, UK
Bingo

What exactly are they saying? Are all people with ME/CFS self-critical perfectionists? What is the prevalence in the general population? Where's the control group? If, as with me, this is a stable trait, why do fatigue levels fluctuate, is it context dependent?

Is this trait necessarily a bad thing?

The literature actually suggests that perfectionism itself is not the problem. It can push individuals to be more productive. What apears to be problematic is the discrepency between having high standards and the ability to achieve them :

http://www.rps.psu.edu/sep96/almost.html

Given our much reduced capacities it would be somewhat unsurprising if some of us even without perfectionist tendencies felt distressed by being unable to meet our obligations and increasingly distressed when fatigue and pain were worse. I'm sure this is true in any chronically ill group

Hi Marco,
If the suggestion is that we all have this trait, a big if as you point out, then surely the sensible thing would be to establish what trigger transforms this from a evolutionarly advantage to a pain and fatigue producing life threat, because like everyone else on this forum I wasn't always ill.
Alternately if the problem is having high standards and not being able to achieve them, and the suggestion is that the trigger is a crushing realisation that we can't deliver as we thought we could then why isn't there a higher prevelance among Physicians, Psychiatrist and Politicians, after all just taking our illness alone they've failed to deliver for decades, you'd think given that a Psychiatrist claims to understand our experience better than we do they'd just be falling apart at their failure to help more than 1 in 8 of us (PACE).
Given our capacites comment, yes, no brainer eh, does that mean the author's simply don't have a brain, I never cease to be amazed at how they can research the obvious and still draw absurd unproven conclusions.

By the way I've checked the AFME website today and my comments haven't been posted, neither have I had a moderator contact me to say anything in my post was unaceptable or to invite a rewording. Is it fair for me to assume that the site in question is one of those government funded propoganda outlets with no real membership accountability or do I have it wrong?
 

peggy-sue

Senior Member
Messages
2,623
Location
Scotland
I've left 2 comments too - whih haven't appeared yet.
AfME is a very dodgy organisation. I'm on the forums, I even :oops: signed up to their "time for action" campaign - but I'm only there as a spy and to check up on them!
 

Xandoff

Michael
Messages
302
Location
Northern Vermont
I think there is another thread on this. Its more babble, but they keep changing the babble. "Oh yes, we know the old babble is wrong, but you haven't disproved the new babble!"

Did it ever occur to them that when we get sick, and our life sucks, and nothing works, and we get criticised from everywhere including doctors, that some of us might become more self critical? Cause and effect is not the same as association.

Bye, Alex
AMEN BROTHER ALEX!
 

Xandoff

Michael
Messages
302
Location
Northern Vermont
Just in case it doesn't make it past moderation on the biggest ME patients forum -

Posted on Action for ME as a comment on this 'study', I choke on the word.

Self critical perfectionism, first time I've come across this term, is it a recognised condition? Does it constitute a psychological illness? Or is it just a term someone burning a budget has decided to give to a scale which they or their peer group have coined in isolation.
Introspection and performance analysis are surely a clear part of the human condition without which we would neither strive nor survive.
For anyone who has been used to one level of performance to find any factor, internal or external which then limits that performance there is going to be frustration, I wonder for instance how many paraplegics have beaten their legs in temper.
So this study takes a group of sick individuals and finds that there's more frustration among the more severely effected...they had to research that, seriously someone spent money to grasp that!
More mind boggling are the conclusions, from having established nothing more than an association between self criticism and an inability to function due to pain and / or fatigue, that is self evident to anyone caring to think about it for more than a minute, they conclude that 'SCP predicts both fatigue and pain'.
Why is this two way association so presented, why was the conclusion not 'fatigue and pain predict the level of SPC'?
I would offer firstly that this quote from the paper, along with the discipline of the researchers would be predictive of the favoured view of the association 'Congruent with expectations'. The study was entered into with expectations on the part of those performing the study and to conclude that pain and fatigue were predictive of the level of self criticism is to acknowledge that pain and fatigue, two things outside their domain are causative.
Secondly I would offer that 'therapeutic interventions aimed at targeting SCP' a psychiatrist can sell, therapeutic interventions which fix the biological abnormalities reported in over 4000 papers, and which have to be ignored in order to drink this hog wash, are somewhat out of their grasp.
I predict that if you fix the real pain and real fatigue then you'll find that the patient no longer requires the community acquired self critical crutch.
AMEN....AMEN....AMEN!
 

biophile

Places I'd rather be.
Messages
8,977
Assuming they are studying the correct group of patients, I guess the interpretation of the results depends heavily on the effect sizes involved and what is being detected as "self-critical perfectionism" on the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire. Many questionnaires used in this sort of research ask questions which can provide false positives for what they are supposed to be measuring when used on disease cohorts.

That said, ME/CFS is characterized by post-exertional symptomatology, so it would be unsurprising if internal stresses can worsen symptoms or perception of symptoms. However, another issue is whether the self-critical perfectionism is compromising acceptance or coping ability for the same degree of symptoms rather than worsening symptoms, or whether it is simply altering questionnaire-taking behaviour rather than the symptoms.

Controlling for depression scores isn't enough. What about controlling for activity levels and daily hassles which may have brought on both self-critical perfectionism and symptom exacerbations? As Marco said, perfectionism is not necessarily the problem, but the discrepancy between standards/expectations and ability/achievement, which can become wider during illness and lead to frustration.
 

peggy-sue

Senior Member
Messages
2,623
Location
Scotland
I find myself wondering what other parameters folk can think of that might correlate with sets of symptoms.

Height? Birthday month? Birthday year? The time of day? The FTSE index?
The number of freckles on the left-hand side of your nose?

Invent enough personality traits and some of them will correlate with something. Law of averages!
 

SilverbladeTE

Senior Member
Messages
3,043
Location
Somewhere near Glasgow, Scotland
I find myself wondering what other parameters folk can think of that might correlate with sets of symptoms.

Height? Birthday month? Birthday year? The time of day? The FTSE index?
The number of freckles on the left-hand side of your nose?

Invent enough personality traits and some of them will correlate with something. Law of averages!

Which is how fortune tellers, snake oil slaesman and other charlatans have worked for millenia!

"oh, a Susan! my spirit guide says distinctly: Susan! is there a Susan in the house?"
well of course there bloody well will be if there's enough people! ;)

(and not all spiritualists are frauds but majority bloody well are...same racket as the psychobabblers)
 

peggy-sue

Senior Member
Messages
2,623
Location
Scotland
Don't frighten me like that - I'm a Susan!:eek:
(I disagree with your last comment though. All spiritualists are frauds. Even if it's only themsleves they're fooling.)
 

SilverbladeTE

Senior Member
Messages
3,043
Location
Somewhere near Glasgow, Scotland
SEE! I HAVE THE MAGIC 'FLUENCE!!
*makes Swamy-magic finger wriggling gestures at Peggy*
You will give me all your money!! Boogie boogie boogie!! *he says in Boris Karloff voice* :p

Well, fraud means deliberate misdoing, self delusion is different so such should be called "wrong" or whatever you preffer, and while I'm sure we'll disagree, once in a very rare while...you'd be damn surprised at what you find.
hm, trying to remember the guy's name, ah yes, Carl Sergent, UK parapsychologist....interesting stuff form him and reason why he mostly disappeared.