http://blacktrianglecampaign.org/20...strategies-for-getting-the-sick-back-to-work/
I haven't finished reading this whole article yet (it's a long one) but it is looking like a very thorough take-down of the UK 'BPS' school of thought and the effect it has had on the sick and disabled in UK.
Here is an excerpt:
I haven't finished reading this whole article yet (it's a long one) but it is looking like a very thorough take-down of the UK 'BPS' school of thought and the effect it has had on the sick and disabled in UK.
Here is an excerpt:
The BPS model is consistently deployed in the framing by this group, across the span of their publications, of an ‘illness deviance’, its principles drawn upon to emphasise the (flawed) ‘subjectivity’ of those suffering ill-health in a way which seeks to undermine their credibility, asserting that there has been a proliferation of ‘medically unexplained symptoms’, juxtaposed against the notion that the majority of health problems are ‘common’, and therefore experienced ‘commonly’ within everyday human experience by most people. This purpose could not be further from the intent of its originator who declared that “[M]any illnesses are largely subjective – at least until we as observers discover the parameters and framework within which we can also make objective observations. Hyperparathyroidism, in many of its manifestations, was a purely subjective experience for many patients until we discovered what to look for and which instruments to use in the search”. (Engel, 1961). Engel further sounds a cautionary note for those involved in the production of new knowledge: qualifying a definition of research as “to see what everyone else has seen and think what nobody else has thought” with a caution not to fall into the trap of thinking that the ‘new’ thought is necessarily any more correct. It is something perhaps that the BPS lobby might well have borne in mind considering the serious effects their ‘theories’ are now having on the lives of the sick and disabled 1.