The Psychologist (the monthly publication of the British Psychological Society) recently published a summary of the findings of the PACE trial, exaggerating its effectiveness. Oceanblue and I wrote a letter in response to this article which they published in the June issue (see post 968 in the PACE trial thread), along with another mainly critical letter.
In the July issue they've published a letter by Kristina Downing-Orr which supports ours, saying that CBT and GET are 'as useless as a chocolate teapot'.
All very encouraging, but also in the July issue they've published the following summary of a paper presented at this year's annual conference, defining ME (though they call it CFS) as a 'functional somatic syndrome' :
Costly conundrum
Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) presents healthcare providers with a costly conundrum. Known by medical professionals as frequent consulters, sufferers of CFS tend to report around 16 different symptoms per patient. Most commonly these include concentration difficulties, muscle pain, fatigue, weakness and fever. At present there is no known underlying cause for CFS and no coherent approach to treatment. Moreover, outcomes for patients vary wildly depending on how improvement and recovery are defined and measured. Marie Thomas (University of Wales), Andy Smith (Cardiff University) and Gary Christopher (University of the West of England) ran a three-year study with the aim of developing a toolkit that would help to understand outcomes for sufferers of this most mysterious of functional somatic syndromes (others in this family include irritable bowel syndrome, tinnitus and chronic lower back pain). Over 200 patients were recruited from specialist CFS clinics and asked to fill out measures of well-being, quality of life and psychopathology as well as symptom checklists and measures of illness beliefs, history and severity; 84 per cent of participants believed that their illness had been preceded by a specific event, often a bout of flu. At three-year follow-up, 45 per cent said they were recovered with occasional relapses, while only 2 per cent felt they had recovered completely. One of the best predictors of recovery seemed to be employment; participants who were in work at initial testing were more likely to be in the recovered group at the end of the study.
Sarah Haywood
Also, disappointingly, in the electronic version of the journal their monthly 'special paper from the archive' is a paper by Peter Spencer from 1998 entitled 'CFS - a suitable case for treatment' which is a description of one person's recovery which he attributed largely to CBT.
So they seem to be interested in ME at the moment, and I think they may be receptive to an article reviewing the evidence for ME as a serious physical illness, and questioning the role of psychologists in its treatment.
Anyone up to writing something like this and submitting it to The Psychologist? I'm not sure if you have to be a psychologist to submit material, but I am, and would be happy to collaborate. I don't have access to the literature so couldn't do much substantively, but could help stylistically (I used to be an editor of an academic psychology journal).
Jenny
In the July issue they've published a letter by Kristina Downing-Orr which supports ours, saying that CBT and GET are 'as useless as a chocolate teapot'.
All very encouraging, but also in the July issue they've published the following summary of a paper presented at this year's annual conference, defining ME (though they call it CFS) as a 'functional somatic syndrome' :
Costly conundrum
Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) presents healthcare providers with a costly conundrum. Known by medical professionals as frequent consulters, sufferers of CFS tend to report around 16 different symptoms per patient. Most commonly these include concentration difficulties, muscle pain, fatigue, weakness and fever. At present there is no known underlying cause for CFS and no coherent approach to treatment. Moreover, outcomes for patients vary wildly depending on how improvement and recovery are defined and measured. Marie Thomas (University of Wales), Andy Smith (Cardiff University) and Gary Christopher (University of the West of England) ran a three-year study with the aim of developing a toolkit that would help to understand outcomes for sufferers of this most mysterious of functional somatic syndromes (others in this family include irritable bowel syndrome, tinnitus and chronic lower back pain). Over 200 patients were recruited from specialist CFS clinics and asked to fill out measures of well-being, quality of life and psychopathology as well as symptom checklists and measures of illness beliefs, history and severity; 84 per cent of participants believed that their illness had been preceded by a specific event, often a bout of flu. At three-year follow-up, 45 per cent said they were recovered with occasional relapses, while only 2 per cent felt they had recovered completely. One of the best predictors of recovery seemed to be employment; participants who were in work at initial testing were more likely to be in the recovered group at the end of the study.
Sarah Haywood
Also, disappointingly, in the electronic version of the journal their monthly 'special paper from the archive' is a paper by Peter Spencer from 1998 entitled 'CFS - a suitable case for treatment' which is a description of one person's recovery which he attributed largely to CBT.
So they seem to be interested in ME at the moment, and I think they may be receptive to an article reviewing the evidence for ME as a serious physical illness, and questioning the role of psychologists in its treatment.
Anyone up to writing something like this and submitting it to The Psychologist? I'm not sure if you have to be a psychologist to submit material, but I am, and would be happy to collaborate. I don't have access to the literature so couldn't do much substantively, but could help stylistically (I used to be an editor of an academic psychology journal).
Jenny