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Illness as Deviance, Work as Glittering Salvation and the Psyching-up etc

Messages
13,774
Thanks for posting that Suzy. I think she's right about a lot of the over-arching themes there, and it's a shame that they haven't received wider attention, as they are of wider importance. Hopefully people in the mainstream media will take the time to read it.
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
I added this comment:
"Alex Young aka alex3619 says:
January 22, 2012 at 11:17 pm

This is an excellent article. I have recently drawn some of the same conclusions you have, although I am nearly a year behind you in analyzing it all. There is an important part of the debate missing though: the evidence based medicine movement. It is closely tied into the biopsychosocial movement, and is again an arm of government policy dictating to the medical profession. It has been called Zombie Science.

I am in Australia but have been actively watching this encroach on the UK disabled. It is loathesome what is happening over there. I might be half a world away, and disabled myself, but I cannot be quiet on this issue. The sense of fear and bewilderment I regularly hear from the disabled in the UK is reverberating around the world.

Those of you living in the UK might feel that you are isolated and in this alone, but if you reach out to international activists you may find global support.

This has the potential to completely destroy the good name of the UK, and people are already making unsavoury parallels with despicable regimes.

One of the things that is often missed is there is a growing rise in opposition to the biopsychosocial movement, not from the disabled, but from psychiatrists and other medical professions. I am looking into this."

I would like to add a little additional commentary.

"It is the contention of this article that a prime purpose behind recent use of the BPS is to create an artificial distinction between deserving and undeserving sick, through the social construction of a new category of patient/claimant the illness deviant in order to facilitate the movement of a high percentage of those claiming illness related benefits off welfare, via the aforementioned WCA."

This deserving and undeserving sick argument has been used to describe ME patients - we are the undeserving sick.

"Conscious, no doubt, of the social unacceptability of the suggestion that all sick and disabled people are malingerers, there is then the attempt to construct a softer variant of the illness deviant via psychology. This individual is more by way of being an accidental malingerer, subject to a form of self-deception, in which they harbour irrational beliefs about their condition, and how it affects their functioning or capabilities. This deviant also holds similar mistaken attitudes towards work in that they make false attributions towards it as the source of their illness or potential cause of further suffering, and fail to realise it is the only means by which they can heal. Once these have been posed as the problem and solution, a process in which sufferers are invariably found fit for work can justify a snatching away of the crutches of benefit support through a doublespeak discourse reframing such support as abandonment and redefining this actual form of abandonment as rescue."

I wonder if he has ME in mind, or if this insidious attitude is spreading to other disorders. I am getting the impression it is the latter, which again highlights that we have been trying to fight this on our own, without realizing that many other disabled communities have the same issue.

"Bluesky, I was appalled to discover what they have been doing to the M.E community for so many years. Its nothing short of legitimised abuse. The one discouraging thing Ive experienced in all my research so far has been discovering, for how many years, how much authentic evidence has been simply disregarded by those in power in favour of this spurious psychological approach. Some of the accounts on the net are simply heartbreaking, and it beggars belief that these people should have been allowed to continue with their methods and theories. As someone pointed out recently they intervene in peoples lives with impunity, disregarding their negative effects, for which they are never held to account, and quickly move on to something else (as Wessely did in moving on to Gulf War Syndrome, another topic that evidently held the potential for his psychological quackbuster approach). Professor Wessely should be granted a dictionary of his own, so far has he stretched the meaning of the English language while attempting to explain that ME although a real illness, is often first magined. He has trodden the tightrope of confusing semantics with the balance of Blondel and the focus of a train spotter. Martin J. Walker In Wesselys World were ALL potential hysterics. Excluding himself of course. Though its evident from his over-reaction to legitimate criticism that his particular psychological susceptibility is to a persecution complex. Ironic."

This is the last bastion of obsolete Freudian psychiatry. It should be opposed by medical practitioners and researchers everywhere. The fact that it hasn't is indicative that the medical profession by and large (yes, there are exceptions thankfully) have acquiesed to the wholesale abuse and ostracising of the disabled. I find it interesting that Gil is using the euthanasia by stealth argument that I have used on several occasions. The opinions in this article are very close to my own.

Bye, Alex
 

justinreilly

Senior Member
Messages
2,498
Location
NYC (& RI)
nice to see someone who is not directly related to the ME world taking notice and telling it like it is! These incremental movements in the right direction are building steam. Let's keep it up!
 
Messages
72
Location
UK
"Arbeit macht frei" (work liberates)

Over the gate to Auschwitz.

I wrote this same thing in the comments section on a Guardian article along the same theme. I referred to it as the Tory parties new slogan, and accused them as no better than Nazi's. My comment got marked up highly before being removed due to a complaint. Luckily, someone had quoted me and replied 'well said'. His reply was also marked up and remained on the comments!

Seriously, it is bad enough being so ill all the time, but this constant attack on the disabled by the British Government has stressed me so much in the last year that my health has deteriorated badly. What's more my IB to ESA assessment is due in the next few months - those that know me say I have nothing to fear, but when they are forcing terminally ill patients back to work, I feel that many people are not in tune with what is going on in the UK. :(
 

Dx Revision Watch

Suzy Chapman Owner of Dx Revision Watch
Messages
3,061
Location
UK

Marco

Grrrrrrr!
Messages
2,386
Location
Near Cognac, France
I wrote this same thing in the comments section on a Guardian article along the same theme. I referred to it as the Tory parties new slogan, and accused them as no better than Nazi's. My comment got marked up highly before being removed due to a complaint. Luckily, someone had quoted me and replied 'well said'. His reply was also marked up and remained on the comments!

Seriously, it is bad enough being so ill all the time, but this constant attack on the disabled by the British Government has stressed me so much in the last year that my health has deteriorated badly. What's more my IB to ESA assessment is due in the next few months - those that know me say I have nothing to fear, but when they are forcing terminally ill patients back to work, I feel that many people are not in tune with what is going on in the UK. :(

Sorry Laurie but this a little bugbear of mine.

The involvement of UNUM/ATOS, the psychosocial school, Work Capability Assessments and the planned migration from ICB to ESA and all that entails long predates the current government.

Hooper dates the genesis of these changes to 1993 under a Conservative government but they have continued unabated ever since, regardless of the political orientation of the government in place.

I also wouldn't expect things to change if the present coalition were ousted tomorrow.
 

SilverbladeTE

Senior Member
Messages
3,043
Location
Somewhere near Glasgow, Scotland
yeah this has been going on a LONG time.
Thatcher/Reagan's scumbags started our societies down a deep nasty rabbit hole...(see the Ayn Rand groupies amongst them for just how inhuman and evil they are, and what they caused to happen, jeesh)
Left, Right all the same, all bend over and take up the *** for their corporate masters. :rolleyes:

This isn't genocide for what we'd see as the standard type of political extremism, but for sheer greed: we are superflous so we must be got rid of.
Same happened, as I have oftne said, with the Nazis, because of who was really pulling their strings.
Who were the first to be routinely, industrially eliminated? the disabled.
We cost taxes to the megarich/corporations, and so, they will NOT allow us to do so.
Hell they are trying to avoid tax all together and many actually achieve it now (several US mega corporations have negative tax in effect, from what I've read!)

They need "enablers" to do so, so the psychobabblers are used, just like similar pseudoscientists and intellectual or media cranks were used by the nazis and other regimes to make the destruction of one group or another legitimized.
Again, as I keep saying, these scumbags have read Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and the Nuremberg trials, they have learned how to manipulate folk and GET AWAY WITH IT!


However, I was pleased to se Paddy Ashdown refuse to take part in this vile crap in the UK, so not all politiians are verministic prostitutes and traitors.

"All it takes for evil to flourish, is for good men to remain silent".
 

Battery Muncher

Senior Member
Messages
620
Sorry Laurie but this a little bugbear of mine.

The involvement of UNUM/ATOS, the psychosocial school, Work Capability Assessments and the planned migration from ICB to ESA and all that entails long predates the current government.

Hooper dates the genesis of these changes to 1993 under a Conservative government but they have continued unabated ever since, regardless of the political orientation of the government in place.

I also wouldn't expect things to change if the present coalition were ousted tomorrow.

To be fair, she never specifically accused the Tories of being the sole perpetrators - only that 'it is their new slogan'.

In any case, you are right - it barely matters who is in charge anymore. Ideology has been replaced by kowtowing to corporate interest. It's depressing.


To the OP: thanks for posting this article, it is excellent!
 

Sean

Senior Member
Messages
7,378
I am in Australia but have been actively watching this encroach on the UK disabled. It is loathesome what is happening over there. I might be half a world away, and disabled myself, but I cannot be quiet on this issue. The sense of fear and bewilderment I regularly hear from the disabled in the UK is reverberating around the world.

If Tony Abbott and his bunch of rabid right wing thugs get into power in Australia, then we can expect no better treatment here, maybe even worse.
 

currer

Senior Member
Messages
1,409
If Tony Abbott and his bunch of rabid right wing thugs get into power in Australia, then we can expect no better treatment here, maybe even worse.

That is true.

These policies are part of globalisation. I have relatives widely spread throughout the world. All the developed countries are instituting these right wing policies - sometimes they are really carbon copies of each other's policy. The citizens of each country do not appear to be aware of how multinational these programmes are, as the reasons offered to the population always refer to local conditions as a justification.

Health, pensions, education...all going the same way.
 

Uno

Senior Member
Messages
157
Location
Brighton, United Kingdom
I believe it was under John Major's Government that Peter Lilley went to a Conference with Mansyl Alward who proposed these sort of draconion welfare reforms, back in 1994. Michael Sharpe was lecturing at UNUM Conferences around that period as well. This has been in the pipeline for many years - I am proud of all those in the UK who are putting up a resistance to these welfare reforms and those who are reporting the facts in the media without bias.
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
Hi Uno, I agree. While this was hidden and not covered by the media, people only heard spin. Now as more and more understand the issues, resistance is growing. I can see it bringing down governments. Bye, Alex

PS On Tony Abott (in other posts) I am not so sure, its a possibility though. There those in all parties who would find this treatment of the disabled abhorent. This philosophy might appeal to the rigth wing initially, but as they see the consequences unfold, at the expense of the British public, they might decide its not worth it. In any case I have been preparing to fight this fight in Australia, thinking about campaigns and tactics, and I am finding that thought process is helping me get a grip on what is happening in the UK, even though I don't think I really understand the extreme emotions this is provoking in the the severely disabled in the UK - I kind of get it, but I think I would have to live through it to really get it. Bye, Alex
 

Marco

Grrrrrrr!
Messages
2,386
Location
Near Cognac, France
Sorry folks. I appreciate that some like to blame right wing politicians for all the ills of the world from the extinction of the dinosaurs onwards but in this case it doesn't fit - even from the perspective of political philosophy.

Liberal conservatives would favour competition and freedom of choice - even admittedly if 'choice' is very much dependent on the ability to pay.

What we have here is the exact opposite of competition and choice. While Lilley may have invited Alward in, the process has been driven by a cadre of technocrats who have managed to establish themselves in positions of power and influence and whose whole philosophy appears to be a paternalistic 'we know better' approach that dictates what is best and what will be made available.

I'm frequently stunned at the range of tests and treatments available to those outside of the UK's bureaucratised healthcare system - again with the caveat that it depends on the ability to pay which is an alien concept to those of us raised with the NHS's free at the point of delivery ethos. What hope of proper diagnosis and tretament when GPs are told that X,Y and Z tests should not be carried out because they are of no diagnostic or clinical significance? Personally if I complained of dizziness and vertigo on standing and my GP ran a tilt table test, I would like to think that my GP would find an abnormal finding of clinical significance regardless of the diagnostic label or what the NICE guidelines say. Who knows, they might even be able to treat it?

No, instead what we have in the UK is 'evidence based medicine'; NICE guidelines; hounding of GPs who step outside those guidelines; plus an inability to tolerate any alternatives to the prescribed officially sanctioned treatments (witness the fact that the PACE authors were not content just to demonstrate the efficacy - sic of their own treatments but were also keen to downplay any efficacy associated with 'pacing' as preferred by patients and ME specialists).

This type of central bureacratic control and micro-management is anathema to the right but very characteristic of a certain leftist elite and if you check the backgrounds of the key players and their associates its pretty clear where their political leanings lie. Are autonomous GP trusts that are free to purchase services from a range of suppliers the slippery slope to the privatisation of the NHS or a threat to the elite centrists currently dictating terms?

Unfortunately the healthcare and welfare nettle is one that had to be grasped at some stage. Tony blair tried but backed down when wheelchair protesters chained themselves to the gates of Downing street. Brown didn't even try for fear of losing public support. The Lib/Con coalition now have the fig leaf of the current period of austerity to introduce welfare reforms safe in the knowledge that the general public won't protest too much as long as not personally affected. Labour would (and planned to) do exactly the same.

As for the biopsychosocialists; its not surprising that a 'pragmatic rehabilitation' approach to medicine that shifts blame and responsibility (and costs) onto the patient is going to be enormously attractive to any administration regardless of their political hue.

The integrity of politicians is highly overstated, particularly in those succesful ones who acceed to power. Thereafter retaining power through maintaining public support is all that matters.

Pointing the finger of blame at one party or another only serves to obscure the real players - those unelected technocrat members of the 'permanent government' who remain firmly in place regardless of election results.
 

Enid

Senior Member
Messages
3,309
Location
UK
Illness as deviance - what SW et al world - cor luv us from that ignorant lot.
 

Sean

Senior Member
Messages
7,378
Certainly not saying that this is entirely a right wing thing. Just that the right of politics are usually worse than the centre or left governments when it comes to this sort of thing. They are always prepared to dive deeper into the sewer when it comes to kicking the disadvantaged and blaming the victim.

Abbott has made no secret over the years of his contemptuous attitude toward welfare and those on it. (Unless, of course, it is middle class vote buying welfare, like baby bonuses, paid parental leave, or private health insurance rebates, all non-means tested of course, in which case he is strongly in favour of it). I have no doubt at all that patients with 'unexplained medical illness' are near the top of his welfare hit list.

Make no mistake, if he gets in (and can get the Senate on side not a given), it will be a very dark day indeed for us down under. Especially if he takes his 'scientific' advice on this issue from Lloyd, et al, who have now forfeited their claim to objectivity and fairness.

Even if Abbott gets reined in eventually, after the carnage becomes just too obvious to ignore, in the meantime he can still do an awful lot more damage to already very damaged lives. And the more moderate wing of the conservatives have not demonstrated such backbone against Abbott that we can rely on them to keep his more brutal policies in check.
 

currer

Senior Member
Messages
1,409
But Marco, the technocrats you so rightly blame are promoting the interests of multinational business.
Isn't that right wing?

When my GP is privatised I shall not have choice. As a chronically sick "customer" I shall be lucky to keep a GP, as my disease will not be profitable to them.

I remember socialism - the "choices" we have now are both equally bad - in fact there is no true choice.