A BPS framework is supposed to be integrative and cover all aspects of care, but much of the apparent success of the imbalanced
bioPSYCHO(social) flavour applied to ME/CFS seems to be propped up by spin and appeals to authority, and like a
spinning top, it will eventually collapse without ongoing spin. But don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Psychological research isn't necessarily the problem; it's the questionable underlying assumptions, the failure to grasp the context of what the patient is reporting, the often poor methodological quality in general, and the disproportionate funding it receives compared to biomedical and other research. We still need larger studies on psychiatric comorbidity which take into account the problems with physical symptoms counting towards diagnosis even in the absence of psychopathology, and on the illness experience of patients without automatically assuming everything is somehow maladaptive.
Suppose research funding went up to something more reasonable such as $100 million per year. I would have no problem with 10% or even 20% going towards relevant and well conducted psychological research. Ironically, even if 80% of funding went to psychological research, there would be a lot more remaining for biomedical research, compared to the current situation, if CFS received as much consistent funding as some psychiatric diagnoses do.
It is my impression that psychiatric diagnoses/conditions are under funded more in the sense of allocated resources for treatment and management rather than for basic research. According to the NIH webpage on categorical spending (
http://report.nih.gov/categorical_spending.aspx), Depression was allocated $415 million in 2013 vs $5 million for CFS in 2013. I could not find Anxiety per se, but Schizophrenia received $232 million, Mental Health received ~$2.2 billion, and Behavioral and Social Science received several billion in total (there are two categories).
If you have seen the movie "Rango", perhaps ME/CFS funding could be roughly compared to that small town of creatures in the desert, which is not only severely parched of water but what little water exists is being siphoned off for questionable projects, and not that far away is tonnes of water being thrown around by humans.
The BPS approach has been presented as cost-saving. This approach for ME/CFS has basically been minimal testing or medical care, and herding patients into CBT/GET-like management. However, patients are not generally recovering or getting back to work as a result, so this approach has failed to deliver significant cost-savings to society apart from the superficial at best, eg discouraging patients from seeking medical care, while ME/CFS continues to be a huge burden elsewhere in lost productivity, welfare/insurance, and lost taxes. Even then, the PACE Trial showed that when taking into account the costs of CBT/GET, overall there are no savings in total service costs, at least in the first year.
I think BPS in its current form is going to collapse much like previous fads once exposed to adequate scientific skepticism, but any useful parts will live on in whatever replaces it or are already part of alternative approaches.