"SamanthaJ, post: 840060, member: 27787"]
@Countrygirl, I don't understand the vindictiveness - if they think we're mentally ill, wouldn't we still deserve compassion and respect? Wish I had something helpful or constructive to say - maybe someone else has ideas? Well done for getting through it without exploding.
I think this is easily explained, according to my experience.
It may seem irrational, but doctors view mentally ill patients (who probably have an as yet undiscovered biological illness) with disdain, so they aren't going to treat us with respect.
I have related this story on here before, but I received a call from a local GP who was quite distressed as he had come to believe that the illness that was forcing him to leave his job at a near-by surgery was in fact the very condition he had never believed in: ME.
He told me that he was very worried about his future and wanted to know more about the illness. I offered to send him information but he said he was too scared to give me his personal details as he greatly feared that his colleagues might discover the nature of his illness. He needed to keep the nature of his illness secret.
He said, (direct quote') :
'They ( local GPs) regard people with ME with even more contempt than they do people with depression'
He dreaded, he said, being viewed by his colleagues with the same disbelief and scorn as they regarded the patients who were mentally ill or had ME.
I had to give him all the information I could to help him on the phone.
So, given how they regard the mentally ill, it is not surprising they have such 'contempt' for us.
Interesting story about the newspaper editor - do you think Fleet Street editors have been threatened with the same thing? Would explain a lot...
We have discussed this some time ago on another thread, I think.
Newspapers have to keep 'on message'. ME was/is under a D notice. I think the D stands for 'discretionary' if I recall correctly. Subjects which are regarded as politically sensitive are awarded this label and it means, I believe, that before an editor publishes a story they are supposed/advised to contact a body like the Science Media Centre for the official and accepted version of the topic. It would be sanctioned to publish the photo of either a very obese, smiling, individual sunning herself in the garden( associating lazy, healthy and fat with ME) or an immaculately dressed, busy executive yawning beside her laptop to represent the story of 'Chronic Fatigue' but not a photo of a very sick perhaps emaciated person prostrate in bed behind drawn curtains. The information the general public are fed is very controlled.