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Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body by Jo Marchant

Cheshire

Cheshire

Senior Member
Messages
1,129
In this book (published Jan 2016), Jo Marchant talks extensively about CFS, through the story of Samantha, a patient recovered thanks to Peter White.
An Ode to Peter White's hard work and courage despite facing neurotic patients' support group.


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https://books.google.fr/books?id=KhBMCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT68&lpg=PT68&dq=jo marchant cfs&source=bl&ots=XI5hn_Fvgh&sig=9f1xwNsKYeHsN9ehY3AyTTnoJYk&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiU8OP1uvfKAhXLthQKHfuZAJoQ6AEIIzAA#v=onepage&q=jo marchant cfs&f=false

Review of the book: http://www.theguardian.com/books/20...ience-of-mind-over-body-by-jo-marchant-review
 

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D

Denise

Senior Member
Messages
1,095
Cheshire said:
In this book (published Jan 2016), Jo Marchant talks extensively about CFS, trough the history of Samantha, a patient recovered thanks to Peter White.
An Ode to Peter White's hard work and courage despite facing neurotic patient's support group.


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https://books.google.fr/books?id=KhBMCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT68&lpg=PT68&dq=jo marchant cfs&source=bl&ots=XI5hn_Fvgh&sig=9f1xwNsKYeHsN9ehY3AyTTnoJYk&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiU8OP1uvfKAhXLthQKHfuZAJoQ6AEIIzAA#v=onepage&q=jo marchant cfs&f=false

Review of the book: http://www.theguardian.com/books/20...ience-of-mind-over-body-by-jo-marchant-review
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@Cheshire thanks for starting this thread. I first heard about this book a while ago and have NOT been looking forward to its publication or to any coverage in the MSM about it. This book is NOT our friend - not that anyone here is surprised.

Edit - link to another review http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-science-of-healing-thoughts/
 
A.B.

A.B.

Senior Member
Messages
3,780
Freud's success stories were made up.

Engel's biopsychosocial model described a fictitious patient.

PACE was designed to produce misleading results... and didn't produce much anyway.

Mind over matter approaches cannot be tested against a real placebo intervention.

Psychology has a long history of producing quack treatments supported by junk science.

Medicine has a long history of declaring something a psychosomatic disorder only to later find out that it is an organic illness.

Excuse me if I'm skeptical about anyone being helped by mind over matter approaches.
 
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A.B.

A.B.

Senior Member
Messages
3,780
I wonder why CFS isn't taken seriously. Could it have anything to do with patients being described as irrational extremists, or alternatively, patients being described as lacking insight and needing to be saved from themselves, with a cure acheivable merely with an attitude adjustment and regular exercise? One continues to question the sanity of CBT/GET supporters.
 
chipmunk1

chipmunk1

Senior Member
Messages
765
the usual BS.

As expected:

(from the comment section)

A female friend of mine was complaining about not feeling well, exaggerated menstruations, low back pain and so on to her GP during about 10 years . He said there was nothing going ,it was just her depressive mind. When she couldn't seat or lay anymore it was the same. When she in her mid forties started urinating in her pants he send her to the gynaecologist . She had her uterus removed short after. It was like a football ,containing 25 tumours some up to 8 cm long. Something they had never seen in the hospital. When the operation took place she had recently lost her job and was in very bad shape. She recovered afterwards. Even from depression. In this case I think the physics problems originated the depression. Something the writer of this article didn't consider.
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I also was diagnosed with depression for 3 years when telling my GP I was exhausted all the time. It turned out that I had a brain tumour. By the time it was correctly diagnosed and operated on and then treated with radiotherapy I had left a job and a home I loved because I felt I was unable to maintain both and couldn't let people down.
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In my view there's rather too much assuming things are all in your head in medicine. I have two friends undergoing cancer treatment at present. In both cases the diagnosis and treatment was greatly delayed by them being told they had, in one case, depression and in the other depression and irritable bowel syndrome. One woman has pancreatic cancer and the other advanced ovarian cancer. In neither case is the prognosis good.
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I know far too many people over the years who have been told by their doctors that their aliments were caused by stress, or negative thinking or some such thing. I have seen far too many people being made to feel guilty about being ill or having complaints that their doctors will not or cannot investigate. I too was one such. 10 years of severe abdominal pain which was misdiagnosed as IBS (the catch all for untested stomach and bowel problems) turned out to be gall bladder disease. 15 years of failing health with a raft of disabling symptoms were diagnosed as ME/CFS - this turned out to be auto-immune hepatitis and other auto-immune conditions.
Now there are those like Marchant and the arch mind over matter guru Chopra who would argue that my immune dysfunction is a symptom of my mind's distress and that if I could just calm my mind and live healthily I would recover. To these people I would say that I have spent twenty years trying to help myself with healthy diets, meditation, yoga, avoidance of stress (easier said than done), CBT, prayer and so on. Now these things are not powerless - I do believe that they have to some extent lessened or slowed down the symptoms of my illness and I have no regrets about trying them. But undoubtedly the biggest change for the better in the last 20 years of my life have been when 1) the disease gall bladder was removed and 2) I was put life long immune suppressants. I am not cured - AIH is as yet incurable - but the steroids have given me at least some quality of life. I still suffer from disabling psychical and cognitive fatigue, pain and other symptoms but I no longer have to use a wheelchair to do everyday things like shopping and I am no long throwing up all day every day.
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Psychobabble is literally killing patients.
 
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roller

roller

wiggle jiggle
Messages
775
A.B. said:
I wonder why CFS isn't taken seriously. Could it have anything to do with patients being described as irrational extremists, or alternatively, patients being described as lacking insight and needing to be saved from themselves, with a cure acheivable merely with an attitude adjustment and regular exercise? One continues to question the sanity of CBT/GET supporters.
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yes, and this by nobody less than ... psychiatrists... hahaha..

fact is: ppl are crawling around and had to give up their lifes and job.

no, the psychiatrists didnt expect such a backlash.
thats arrogance, ignorance and no sense of the human mind.
 
JohnCB

JohnCB

Immoderate
Messages
351
Location
England
Yet another journalist. She claims she is writing a book as part of a claim about bad science, but there is plenty of bad science in her book. It's a typical diatribe. She starts by taking a poke at homeopathy to set the scene. Now I am not a fan of homeopathy. But what this does show is that she is chasing the sensational. She then goes onto a glib overview of placebos. There is far more to the placebo and associated effects like the nocebo response than she allows. But she is still using a misunderstood effect to sensationalise. What is the other thing if you are trying to avoid bad science - yes, you look at both sides. A book that doesn't cover the facts that you find inconvenient is not good science, it's a rant, no matter how nicely you have written the words. So we get to Samantha and suddenly out of the blue patient groups are reject CBT/GET without a thought. Her story starts with the PACE trial. She conveniently misses that patient groups have been fighting psychological nonsense since McEvedy and his hysteria nonsense. She has been banging on about placebos in the first part of the book. She does the usual bit about gold standard trials to account for the placebo effect. Apparently the gold standard is the randomised controlled trial. No, it's the double blinding that is important. But that would be inconvenient as PACE is not blinded. She doesn't even see that the effects she says have been found for CBT/GET fall well within the placebo range. She is happily unaware of the very real criticisms. Or perhaps she isn't, perhaps she just likes knocking people. Perhaps if she only bothered to interview the people who have been crippled by exercise therapy she might have written a different story. Perhaps she isn't just peddling bad science. Perhaps she is quite happily peddling bad journalism too. This is the era of the scientist journalist, selling books at any cost.
 
eafw

eafw

Senior Member
Messages
936
Location
UK
The author of this nonsense, Jo Marchant, has a background in science but is quite happy to admit that writers don't need to know about a subject to churn out a populist money-spinning (and career-advancing) tale

"Ideally it should be colourful, dramatic, personal and intriguing, and it should have a certain emotion to it, so that it reflects the rest of the article in terms of the atmosphere it evokes, not just the information it contains."

from https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/mar/13/jo-marchant-science-writing-curiosity
 
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