Book published this week in UK referring to ME as psychosomatic

[jimells]

4. Orthostatic hypotension, or POTS--- when your blood pressure goes down, or your heart rate goes up-- Is this also in the "heads" of patients?

Of course. It's the power of Mind Magic at work. One just needs a little faith in the infallibility of mind doctors...

 

[jimells]

Most conspiracy theories are wrong. The reason I have time for conspiracy theories though is they keep people alert, and sometimes they help uncover and deal with conspiracies.

One of the most interesting propaganda techniques is to take a reasonable theory that has some evidence and associate it with other theories that are totally lunatic, in order to discredit the reasonable theory. It's the same concept as discrediting an idea by personal attacks on anyone promoting the idea.

Of course, no self-respecting establishment journalist or government official would ever stoop so low as to use such a tactic. Even suggesting that journalists would ever engage in blatant propaganda activities is, of course, a nutty conspiracy theory...

 

[Sasha]

Interesting comment by Dr Speedy:

http://niceguidelines.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/evidence-that-disease-is-psychosomatic.html

 

[Hell...Hath...No...Fury..]

Interesting comment by Dr Speedy:

http://niceguidelines.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/evidence-that-disease-is-psychosomatic.html

Superb

 

[Scarecrow]

Nice one @Dr Speedy

 

[Sasha]

Nice one @Dr Speedy

I'm not sure it's the same Dr Speedy.

Is it, @Dr Speedy? Do you write the Dr Speedy 'NICE Guidelines' blog?

 

[out2lunch]

As I keep saying, neurologists are by far the WORST of all medical specialties. It's usually pompous old dilapidating male neurology consultants with egos bigger than their IQ spewing crap like this but this woman obviously learned from the "best".

Tell me about it!

My DH has suffered from slowly progressive ataxia, nystagmus, and double vision for over 20 years. And because he also happens to have long-term but perfectly controlled IDDM, the half dozen neurologists he saw, some whom were researchers at two major universities, claimed his diabetes was the cause of these symptoms, even though they're rarely seen in diabetes, while dismissing his lack of the most common ones like neuropathy and retinopathy.

Finally, because the double vision had shifted from intermittent to continuous, his HMO sent him to a neuro-ophthalmologist who figured out what was wrong with him in 10 minutes. He ordered genetic testing and, voila! DH has one of the genetic-based ataxia diseases, which has zero connection to diabetes or any other disease.

There are certainly some good neurologists out there, but my experience has been less than positive for most of them.

 

[alex3619]

It's the power of Mind Magic at work. One just needs a little faith in the infallibility of mind doctors...

For my next trick, I am going to wish all psychobabblers to another plain of existence. .... Waiting .. waiting ... are they gone yet? [Satire]

 

[out2lunch]

If your patients suffered from childhood trauma, are depressed or anxious, the psychosomatic diagnosis can easily be applied.

But if they had non abusive, loving parents, and you can't find any trauma to explain their symptoms, don't worry, we've got a really nice explanation in store for you: use the "too much love" theory. That way you can elegantly diagnose every patient that enters your office.

And you will also join a great, ancient but still vivid current of psychiatry: the "blame the mother" tradition.

So I guess I can blame my mother for instilling a sense of purpose in my life and drive for excellence, thereby leading me to work full-time during the day while completing my M.A. at night, only to graduate and accept a high-paying professional position that I absolutely loved working but ultimately had to quit when I found myself bedridden with high fever, joint pain, persistent sore throats and headaches, and IgG antibodies for EBV totally off the chart.

Yeah. My dear sweet mother gave me "yuppie flu from too much love."

 

[out2lunch]

… accept a high-paying professional position that I absolutely loved working but ultimately had to quit when I found myself bedridden with high fever, joint pain, persistent sore throats and headaches, and IgG antibodies for EBV totally off the chart.

Did I mention the high-paying job was in a building with a history of severe water damage and extensive mold was discovered under the carpeting after I left?

I guess I should also blame my mother for her lack of mycotoxin resistance nurturing.

 

[Sean]

If your patients suffered from childhood trauma, are depressed or anxious, the psychosomatic diagnosis can easily be applied.

But if they had non abusive, loving parents, and you can't find any trauma to explain their symptoms, don't worry, we've got a really nice explanation in store for you: use the "too much love" theory. That way you can elegantly diagnose every patient that enters your office.

The Goldilocks approach. Some magical sweet spot in the middle where everything is just right, and which you need loving but firm professional parental expert guidance to reach, and to decide when you have reached it, even if you haven't and it doesn't even exist.

And they have the gall to accuse us of being deluded?

 

[SOC]

The Goldilocks approach. Some magical sweet spot in the middle where everything is just right, and which you need loving but firm professional parental expert guidance to reach...

And apparently only their parents manage to achieve this expert guidance, because clearly they don't have these kinds of problems. It's only us plebeians who have psychosomatic illnesses from childhood trauma... or is it too much parental care... or over-achieving temperaments... or under-achieving temperaments... or...?

Funny how this type of psychiatrist/psychologist seems to think everyone else can't tell reality from imagination, but they have no problem with it. Not only that, but they can know better what is in other people's minds than those people themselves.

Delusions of omniscience, delusions of grandeur, lack of empathy.... sounds like a mental illness to me. Perhaps they should seek some therapy.

 

[Dr Speedy]

I'm not sure it's the same Dr Speedy.

Is it, @Dr Speedy? Do you write the Dr Speedy 'NICE Guidelines' blog?

Thanks for the compliments. Yes I am the one and only @Dr Speedy

 

[Sasha]

Thanks for the compliments. Yes I am the one and only @Dr Speedy

I didn't realise! Welcome to the forums, Dr Speedy.

 

[Dr Speedy]

I didn't realise! Welcome to the forums, Dr Speedy.

Thanks Sasha. Please remember I've got a severe allergy to Psychosomatic nonsense ;-)

 

[Sasha]

Thanks Sasha. Please remember I've got a severe allergy to Psychosomatic nonsense ;-)

I know! I've been reading your blog for years. Same here.

 

[nasim marie jafry]

... I see The Telegraph gave O'Sullivan's book 5 stars today:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...in-Your-Head-by-Suzanne-OSullivan-review.html

I already left a comment.

ME is not referred to in the actual review from what I can see, I just read quickly, so very bored by all the twaddle.

And I just love the model used to portray psychosomatic illness: to be psychosomatically ill, you just have a bit of pain and look gorgeous.

 

[eafw]

... I see The Telegraph gave O'Sullivan's book 5 stars today:

This is the second piece the Telegraph has run on this book. Like the Guardian they had one from the author, followed by a favourable review a couple of weeks later. Her PR people are certainly doing a good job and the useless British press are swallowing it whole.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/hea...s-When-illness-really-is-all-in-the-mind.html

 

[Countrygirl]

The Countess of Mar writes to Dr O'Sullivan

Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan

National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery

33 Queen Square

LONDON

WC1N 3BG



9 June 2015



Dear Dr O’Sullivan

I write to you as an Independent crossbench member of the House of Lords where I have been since 1975. I am a Deputy Speaker in the House. For more than 20 years I have represented the interests of people with ME/CFS and other MUPS. I am patron of several ME charities and Chairman of Forward-ME.

I have read David Aaronovitch’s review of your book: “It’s all in Your Head – True Stories of Imaginary Illness” and I have listened to what you had to say on Radio 4’s Start the Week programme yesterday, though I have not read your book.Aaronovitch quotes you in the introduction to the chapter on ME as admitting that “to include ME/CFS in a book primarily concerned with the description of those suffering from psychosomatic illness is foolhardy to say the least.” He goes on to say that “This is because the reaction of many ME sufferers, their relatives and friends and the organisations that represent them, to the idea that the condition is psychosomatic – caused by the mind and not by a disease –is intensely hostile. I have experienced this hostility.” I assume the last sentence refers to him personally.

Sadly, both you and he are right about the hostility to the views you both promote, but you give the wrong reasons for that hostility. In recent years there have been a host of papers that demonstrate that ME/CFS is a disease as well as an illness.Firstly the Canadian Consensus document on ME/CFS, published in 2003, gave good guidelines for diagnosis and treatment of people with ME. This was followed by the more comprehensive Myalgic Encephalomyelitis - International Consensus Document published in 2011. More recently, the highly respected US Institute of Medicine in its report “Beyond Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/ Chronic fatigue Syndrome: Redefining the Illness” released on 10 February 2015, made clear that the primary message of the Committee’s report is that “ME/CFS is a serious, chronic, complex systemic disease that often can profoundly affect the lives of patients.” Patients with the disease have always known this and are, understandably, deeply hurt and offended by the denigration they receive from some medical practitioners.

I admire the fact that you believe that people who suffer psychosomatic illnesses should be treated with compassion and understanding but I am equally disappointed that you appear to have failed dismally to keep abreast of current research into ME/CFS. Had people like you in senior positions really tried to discover what is at the root of the symptoms suffered by the patients that you see more progress might have been made in the diagnosis and treatment of this dreadfully neglected disease.

For example, on 30 May this year in Metabolomics Armstrong et al wrote: “Metabolic profiling reveals anomalous energy metabolism andoxidative stress pathways in chronic fatigue patients.” Have you ever thought of metabolic profiling for your profoundly fatigued patients, I wonder? I do realise that there are vast numbers of papers of variable quality published each year, but I really do think that if one is professing an expertise in a particular disease or illness one should try to keep abreast of current research, don’t you?

You appear to be unaware that research shows that ME is an organic multi-system neuro-immune disorder with protean symptomology; some consider it likely to be an autoimmune disease with the target organ being the vascular endothelium.

For the avoidance of doubt, here are some facts that may have escaped you:



· Since 2005 ME has been included in the UK National Framework for long-term neurological conditions.

· On 30 January 2006 the then health Minister,Lord Warner, said on record: “There is only one World Health Organisation International Classification of Disease code for chronic fatigue syndrome/Myalgic encephalomyelitis, which is G93.3.” (HL3612)

· On 2 June 2008 the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Darzi of Denham) stated: “My Lords, the Government accept the World Health Organisation’s classification of CFS/ME as a neurological condition ….MyLords, I have acknowledged that CFS/ME is a neurological condition.” (HLPQ: Health: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis)

· On 21 November 2011 Lord Freud, Minister fo rWelfare Reform, confirmed in a letter to me that the Department for Work and Pensions does not consider ME/CFS to be a mental disorder. The letter was unequivocal: “the Department of Health has indicated that they have ‘always relied on the definition set out by the World Health Organisation in its International Classification of Diseases (ICD)under the ICD code G93.3, subheading other disorders of the brain’. The DWP isin agreement with this view. Therefore, for the avoidance of doubt, I can be clear that the Department does not classify CFS/ME as a mental health disorder.”

· The US National Institutes of Health, one of the world’s foremost medical research centres, convened a Pathways of Prevention working group which, in December 2014, published its draft Statement entitled“Advancing the Research on Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome”.It is an important document as it signifies a major change in attitude towardsME/CFS. For example:

“Strong evidence indicates immunologic and inflammatory pathologies, neurotransmitter signalling disruption, microbiome perturbation, and metabolic or mitochondrial abnormalities in ME/CFS.

“This is not a psychological disease in aetiology.

“fMRI and imaging technologies should be further studied as diagnostic tools and as methods to better understand the neurologic dysfunction of ME/CFS.”


As a neurologist, I am sure you will find these views of interest.



Further research from the US posits that true ME(as distinct from the ubiquitous chronic “fatigue”) is indeed an autoimmune disorder: “Our results indicate a markedly disturbed immune signature in the cerebrospinal fluid of cases consistent with immune activation in the central nervous system, and a shift towards an allergic or T-helper type-2 pattern associated with autoimmunity….Profiles of ME/CFS subjects also differed from those of MS subjects, withME/CFS cases showing a markedly greater degree of central nervous system immuneactivation as compared with those with MS” (M Hornig et al: Molecular Psychiatry 31 March 2015: doi:10.1038/mp.2015.29)

The evidence is now so strong that ME/CFS is a serious multisystem neuro-immune disease that it becomes intellectually embarrassing for anyone to continue to consider it to be a psychosomatic disorder.


I do hope that you will take my submission seriously and reconsider your belief thatME/CFS is a psychosomatic disorder.

I look forward to receiving your considered response.

Yours sincerely



Countess of Mar



Copy: David Aaronovitch.

 

[nasim marie jafry]

Although, I have noticed that apart from the very tiresome David Aaronovitch in Sunday Times - who seems wedded to Wessely school - none of the reviewers mention ME - I think that is probably deliberate. They either know she is recycling quackery, or just don't want to deal with the inevitable 'flak' from pwME. And indeed one Sunday Times reviewer a couple weeks ago said, she 'controversially' thinks ME is psychosomatic. I think (or hope?) most journalists are actually learning that ME is not mental illness but just very, very slow to actually say it. And I find it interesting that Simon and his buddies are not tweeting positively and effusively about O'Sullivan's book - they know deep down their position is untenable - I hope.