1.0 out of 5 stars Knowingly misrepresents ME as a psychiatric disorder, July 1, 2011
By Justin Reilly (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
This review is from: Companion to Psychiatric Studies (MRCPsy Study Guides) (Paperback)
Editor Michael Sharpe is up to his old tricks here, knowingly misrepresenting the devastating neuro-immune disease ME/CFIDS as psychiatric. Sharpe came up with a patently invalid definition of "CFS" called the Sharpe/Oxford 1991 CFS definition which defines "CFS" as nothing more than idiopathic CF. He and his colleagues then have done many studies using this fake definition to back up their claims that "CFS" is really a neurotic disorder. This is obviously circular reasoning. Here he classifies ME under "other neurotic disorders" (pp. 487 & 716).
Why no voting buttons? We don't let customers vote on their own reviews, so the voting buttons appear only when you look at reviews submitted by others.
Permalink
Comment Comment
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Avoid This Book, July 1, 2011
By Humphrey Canine - See all my reviews
This review is from: Companion to Psychiatric Studies (MRCPsy Study Guides) (Paperback)
This book contains factual errors and is misleading.
It is hard not to wince at the thought of all those psychiatrists who used to routinely ridicule children afflicted by paralytic poliomyelitis, authoritatively proclaiming that if only they would stop malingering, they would overcome their "hysterical paralysis". Imagine the distress caused each time a parent was told "You're child only remains paralysed because she won't try hard enough to walk for herself."
Modern (post-WWII) psychiatry has a menacingly extensive history of mischaracterising serious diseases (of biological etiology and pathology) as being emotional disorders. Other examples include tuberculosis, syphilis, MS, Parkinson's, asthma, peptic ulcers, rheumatoid arthritis...
It would be reassuring if such false psychogenic disease attributions were a thing of the distant past, but sadly this is not the case - mainstream psychiatrists were actively treating peptic ulcers as manifestations of emotional problems as recently as the mid 1990s. It would be reassuring if such attributions only existed in the absence of strong physical evidence to the contrary, but sadly this is not the case - mainstream psychiatrists were still treating MS as a psychiatric disorder 80 years after the Sorbonne's Professor Jean-Martin Charcot had identified and documented the degenerative physiological brain changes at the core of this disease.
The problem with the Companion To Psychiatric Studies is that it continues to perpetuate such false and absurd psychogenic attributions in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence. Professor Tony Komaroff of Harvard University repeatedly explains to medical conferences that there are more than 4,000 peer-refereed journal articles pointing to the biological nature of ME/CFS, but Dr Michael Sharpe and his colleagues stick to their dogma that the condition should be characterised and treated as an emotional disorder.
Dr Sharpe and his colleagues should think long and hard about the nature of the Hippocratic Oath that they swore to uphold.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
Report abuse | Permalink
Comment Comment
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Biased information-can you trust it?, July 1, 2011
By Nielk - See all my reviews
This review is from: Companion to Psychiatric Studies (MRCPsy Study Guides) (Paperback)
In this book "Companion to Psychiatric studies", the authors with an air of total authority, pick and chose the studies that will best promote their biased opinion.
It is a great disservice to the lay reading public who might not know the imbalance of the criteria and conclusions that used in this book. Take for example the organic illness of CFS, ME and CFIDS. They categorize these severe biological illnesses as mere psychological. How do they do that? They only mention to the reader the studies that they have performed repeatedly which are biased at the core. No one in the medical field takes these studies seriously. They just use them to be able to claim more illnesses in their court of psychological in nature. They don't balance it out with the multitude of studies done all over the world showing how these illnesses are 100% biological in nature with biological symptoms and probably viral, enteroviral and possibly retroviral as the cause. I would be very weary to read this book and trust any information within. If they can blatantly lie about these illnesses, how can I be sure that the rest is not biased? Save your money and stay away from this one!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
Report abuse | Permalink
Comment Comment
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Biased, arrogant and factually inaccurate, July 1, 2011
By J. K. Burmeister "JKBurmeister" (CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
This review is from: Companion to Psychiatric Studies (MRCPsy Study Guides) (Paperback)
This authors of this book continue to victimize people severely ill with a debilitating organic illness, ME/CFS, by spewing their fake science claiming it is an illness with "physical symptoms but without bodily pathology". Countless scientific studies have shown the organic nature of the illness and, yet, the authors of this book are completely ignoring the vast evidence proving them wrong. Mr. Sharpe, are you in denial or are you just demonstrating a total disregard for the patients you are "treating" and "studying?" It is simply UNTRUE that "bodily pathology" has not been established in the case of ME/CFS. Every real scientist who has studied the disease will be happy to explain that to you.
Psychology and psychiatry have their place if they are practiced responsibly. However, given the unscientific and untrue nature of some of what's stated as fact int his book, acting responsibly doesn't seem to have been on the authors' agenda.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
Report abuse | Permalink
Comment Comment
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Useless, July 1, 2011
By C. Maryhew (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
This review is from: Companion to Psychiatric Studies (MRCPsy Study Guides) (Paperback)
I have not purchased this book, but I did preview the sections on ME/CFS. Unfortunately, the author has presented untrue information is his book, by explicitly stating that there is no discernible pathology for ME/CFS to conclude that is therefor psychiatric. I have read dozens, if not hundreds, of scholarly articles that explicitly state otherwise. It is possible the rest of his book is written to a higher standard, but I wouldn't count on it.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
Report abuse | Permalink
Comment Comment
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Biopsychosocial Anschluss, July 1, 2011
By C. Atherton (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
This review is from: Companion to Psychiatric Studies (MRCPsy Study Guides) (Paperback)
You can hear Michael Sharpe rubbing his hands at the prospect of all those new patients if the "new" biopsychosocial model of illness (p. 716) catches on (actually, it's at least as old as Hippocrates). The model is supposed to promise more integrated treatment of complex illnesses, but I think it rather heralds both increased medicalisation of quite normal psychological phenomena and increased psychiatric diagnoses of non-psychiatric illnesses.
The model confuses, or rather tries to fuse, two quite different things. One is an abnormal bodily state's having psychological effects, especially through stress, the aitiology and effects of which are now quite well understood (though it did take medicine quite a while to realise that chronic pain might actually, in and of itself, be a medical problem, rather than something only cry-babies complain about). The other is an illness's manifesting itself primarily in psychological disturbances. All psychological disturbances will have underlying abnormal brain (physical) states, and it may be possible to change those physical states through pharmacology, surgery, etc., and, more mysteriously, through counselling or therapy. But, leaving aside the risk of treating as abnormal what is actually normal, if not much fun to go through (adolescence, for example), or that a primary psychiatric diagnosis would be absurd for someone with chronic pancreatitis, say, who understandably will be feeling a tad down in the mouth about the whole thing, and may need psychiatric intervention (counselling, anti-depressants, etc.), what is troubling is that the main aim of the model seems to be the diagnosis as psychiatric cases of those with as yet poorly-understood neurological illnesses, which may well have psychological symptoms too. The day-to-day lives of MS sufferers can be helped by antidepressants, but not their basic problem, which is neurological. The same is true of ME sufferers. The fact that the aitiology of MS is now largely understood and that of ME isn't, is irrelevant, because there's so much good, consistent evidence of neurological insult, not to mention other abnormalities in the immune, hormonal, and cardiovascular systems, in ME patients, and ME has been recognised as a neurological illness, under one name or another, since 1934.
But Sharpe, of course, is one of those who, following the fashion begun in the 90's, refuse to admit that there is such a thing as ME and prefer a diagnosis of "CFS", which has no physical symptoms; indeed, if you have any physical symptoms (ignoring unexplained fatigue), then you don't have "CFS". Please do not be misled by the table on p. 487: the "CFS" patients who improved with C(ognitive) B(ehavioural) T(herapy) will not have had ME, but other illnesses characterised by fatigue, some of which may well be primarily psychological. No amount of counselling or CBT will be of any use to ME sufferers except insofar as these techniques may help anyone cope with a chronic disabling condition, and in the case of ME graded exercise therapy, which may help sufferers from depression, for example, will be actively harmful.
