As to the aspersion that CBT/GET critics (and we are not all zealots and stalkers - more tarring with one brush) are part of a widely held societal view of mental illness, which holds that sufferers of such should just pull their socks up:-
1) Many of us have suffered great mental distress due to our physical illness. Circumstantial depression, which is in many cases as serious as endogenous, must be very common among us.
2) Many of us suffering from neurological inflammation or other immune activation have organically based encephalopathic mental symptoms in association with the biology of our illness. This we have in common with many chronic immune activated illnesses whether of infective or autoimmune origin. Read all about these on the web, Max.
3) Certain symptoms commonly found in ME/CFS (and fibro) are mental e.g. memory problems, concentration problems etc. Who disputes this? - apart from a few patients who sadly,like MP, conflate mental with psychogenic, though they do not at the same time speak/write for money from the cathedra of psychiatric authority and are often very ill.
We do not need a lecture on attitudes to mental illness. Many of us know this beast from within.
Further does not CBT/GET represent one of the biggest "pull your socks up" quackeries of our age? "Increase your activity levels because your low activity increases your limitations, and as to immune factors, toxins, gut dysbiosis etc. that will just make you think you are ill which will limit you....." This is pull your socks up par excellence, to borrow a phrase. And if you don't buy our "explanation" you are being challenging and lo and behold within a few sessions you will no longer be Mickey Sharpe's "undeserving" sick. i.e the victims of an illness only the messiahs of CBT/GET can treat, but rather "deserving" sick or even ME zealots. The you can go somewhere else..... but the NHS ain't paying.......
And what of MP's own views of mental illness in as far as they are represented here? Mental illness is widely recognised to have psychological/psychogenic and organic aspects and therapies - psychological or pharmaceutical - are chosen according to condition and with care. Father Ted would say "This really is basic stuff, Max (FatherDouga?)l".
Moreover modern psychiatry - ironically bishop Simon approves - is more and more concerned with the immune aspects of mental illness, yet Max tells us that we, with our poorly understood "mental" illness should reject immune based considerations a priori, presumably also giving short shrift to any of his psychiatric colleagues who are actually interested in biology. Bit odd that, eh? Pemberton, it appears, is not even a serious up to date psychiatrist. Should have been a journo, just like Simon could have been.. Oh in fact he is.
How dare MP condemn us for lack of appreciation of psychiatric illness, when he himself is apparently so far behind the curve?
And, given that mental illness is organic and seriously real, and not "merely" psychological, why is our "mental" illness spoken of as "psychological"?
The answer is that MP and co. don't really think we have major deconditioning at all - any more than they believe in viruses etc, as causal. They believe - allowing for the fact that they may actually be as confused as they seem - but as far as their actions and confused mutterings about us go, they must believe that we really have some kind of fear syndrome, with physical symptoms, but basically fear based , possibly causing some central sensitisation with physical consequences, and needing anti fear therapy- CBT "don't be afraid of exercise" and GET "feel the fear and do it anyway". It's not really about deconditioning at all.
And that is why we "should" go to a psychiatrist for graded exercise, that is why our illness/es marked as they are by physical symptoms can be labelled psychological, and that is why mental as applied to us can largely bypass brain biochemistry and completely ignore immunology and be reduced to psychogenic Why not just be honest about it, Max, instead of portraying us anti psychiatry bigots? You don't even offer us good psychiatry.
Let;'s remember too that MP and co. are the ones who repeat, rightly in my opinion (I am not an anti psychiatry zealot), that poor mental health can make one physically ill, and yet they promote a therapy that is based on falsehood and on bad medicine with poor results, is bad psychiatry and thus, by their own logic, must be bad for our physical health too. They don't even give us good psychiatry.
Oh and the aspersions about us being anti mental health make us physically sick as well.
Sorry for the above rant and original lack of paragraphs. MP's drivel drives me insane, ad I admit this insanity is psycho-circumstantial and he and his ilk are the cause.
The final grand irony is that Simon is now uttering positive things about Rituximab. Presumably Pemberton will be attacking him any day soon - for contempt of "mental" illness.