ME patients are judged with the utmost contempt in the UK and if you view the comments from the public, many see us as benefit scrounging, attention seeking scum. On that basis we are fair game when a YouGov Poll turns up, asking ''is ME real''?. (ME has been 'real' since 1969). Hence it was felt it was OK to make it.
It wasn't long ago that being openly gay would get you beaten up on the streets in rich western countries, before this, being someone without a white face would result in similar treatment in the wrong area of town. All ME sufferers are, are a new minority and thus targeted by bigots. There will be people after us, as new targets also. Unfortunately this is our era to experience it.
Because we are so physically and cognitively disabled, we are sheltered from the external world, what is known as ''outside'', a world hard to see if you can't stand up or tolerate going outside in a wheelchair. Some sufferers, have no idea how much some people despise us (not just doctors) but sadly they do. I do though, as the people who hurt us the most aren't the public, they're doctors who dismiss us. Doctors who read these UK 'headlines', over toast and coffee and remember what they read and are influenced by it surgeries up and down the country.
So the hatred of ME sufferers, is largely caused by the press. The average 'Jo' doesn't read science, care for it, or even know what complicated words mean. They get their education on the front of tabloid newspapers, and believe what they read to be accurate. More dangerously, the educated middle classes (the aforementioned doctors, teachers, and emergency services personnel) also read the Telegraph/Guardian/Times and also believe what they read to be true, regarding trashing the legitimacy of neurological ME (via CBT GET). These articles of the same theme, using the same catch phrases are published over and over again, clearly by the same lobby.
Governments use propaganda to suppress minorities they need to keep down, the media is the best way. Psychiatrists study the human mind and know best how to induce stress into the target (patient community), to cause more symptoms, more worry and more feelings of suicide and despair. If some lash out, they can then use these patients are examples they are 'unstable'. They know we know this. They know we are cowered by fear of being 'judged' and a central nervous system that cannot cope with stress (chest pain, tachycardia, asthma, anxiety, seizures - all worsened by stress). This is why you don't see protests on the streets (unlike the LBGT movement and Stonewall (AIDS). We are totally hidden and out of sight is out of mind.
Imagine the power that must give you, to dominate others lives this much, simply by words and lies. Their ego's are enhanced and their arrogance reaches new territories. One of the elite troll, trolling in the press knowing, that no one dare complain, no one dare go on video and tell the potential millions around the digital world how they feel (e.g. on YouTube) and if they did, most people would laugh at the victim. It takes an incredible mind to accept rejection by 99% when 1% accepts you.
I'm sure like others, I keep my multi decade diagnosis secret. I tell no one, such is the shame in reveal. Even on here, when I type I feel deeply embarrassed, I don't feel worthy of an opinion, and afterwards I feel guilty and worry.
This is why the Psych lobby does to patients over decades of causing disbelief by questioning legitimacy over their organic neuroimmune disease. Many patients eventually lose all hope, who have no one to talk to, and can't make friends as they're 35 but got sick at 15 but can't leave the house. Lives are devastated.
So the media/press discrimination we all recognise in the UK, can be deadly to patients who are fragile and broken. That's why printing the scientific fraud about PACE and CBT GET being 'effective', is so dangerous and indeed reckless endangerment and needs to stop.
The question is, as it's state sponsored in the UK, how do you complain without being targeted yourself? It appears, it's down to America to make documentaries, for Norway to run the clinical trials, and for others to try and do their best to break down the cast iron hegemony .
At least we have each other, even if you are people in virtual worlds, you have at least compassion, empathy, respect for the disabled and an insight based on intelligence not greed. I wonder, if patients with so much hardship can have these qualities, then why can't the medical profession? Knowing we yearn for medical equality, the abusers strike us where it hurts us most - our emotions.
I'm not sure what I think about this poll!
