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Not sure what you mean. There was an actual meeting with all these people at it as far as I know.This is photo shopped isn't it with sourced actual quotes added in?
NoAre you saying that all of those quotes etc are directly from one meeting in 2001 in Oxford?.
Don't knowIs there a transcript of such a meeting or full audio recording.
A pdf from the meeting is available here: http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/Malingering_and_Illness_Deception.pdf
Lots have commented about CFS, Gulf war illness, etc. as you can see.
Published on 10 Jul 2015
Malingering and Illness Deception Meeting
6th-8th November 2001
Woodstock, Oxford
Michael Sharpe said:Somatoform disorders, conversion, dissociation, and functional somatic syndromes
A substantial proportion of attenders at medical clinics have symptoms that are not explained by disease. They are often given a diagnosis of a functional somatic syndrome. The psychiatric classifications offer a parallel scheme in which many patients with such conditions are diagnosed as suffering from somatoform disorders. If there is loss of physical function the diagnosis may be conversion disorder, and if loss of mental function one of dissociative disorder. All these diagnoses require that there is no adequate explanation for the symptoms in terms of physical pathology. The fact that these conditions usually present to medical services, used to patients having diseases, makes an allegation of malingering in such cases much more likely. The diagnosis of conversion or dissociation hangs on the clinician making a judgement that the mechanism is unconscious. Gross inconsistency (e.g. the patients who staggers into the consultation but runs for the bus) is often used to make this distinction, but even that may be inconclusive.
Case example
A 35-year-old woman was seen in the clinic saying that she had ‘ME’ and requesting a report for the benefits agency. She gave a history of severe disabling fatigue for 5 years following a viral infection. She said that she had not worked and admitted that she had found her previous employment as a teacher very stressful. She was now receiving substantial state benefits and her partner had given up his work to look after her. The mental state and physical examinations were unremarkable. The patient walked very slowly to the waiting room and was collected by her partner who pushed her to the car park in a wheel chair. A diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome was made based on the history. Subsequent to the assessment one of the nursing staff reported that she had seen the patient walking out to the shops appearing unaffected by fatigue. When the patient was challenged about this on a future appointment, she said that she had ‘good and bad days’. The fluctuation was accepted but the possibility of exaggeration of symptoms noted. This case illustrates the importance of seeking evidence of inconsistency over time and that the issue of exaggeration is a vexed one in conditions that may fluctuate from day to day.
Underestimation of illness
The opposite of ignoring exaggerating is excessive scepticism about the veracity of the patient’s complaints. This may result from a personal attitude of scepticism toward suffering and disability of patients who have illnesses that are defined only by symptoms. This issue has been especially salient in the controversy over the nature of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) (Ware 1992). Doctors employed by defence lawyers to perform independent reports may be also influenced by the lawyers’ agenda and be sceptical of the patient’s reported disability even when the evidence for it may be strong.
Simon Wessley said:Just as one consequence of the doctor adopting the role of gate keeper for the new systems was that the doctor became convinced that he was the only defence against a legion of claimants out to deceive and defraud, for the patient came the opposite perspective—of a doctor who did not believe you whatever you said or did. ‘If it was true, as employers seemed to think, that self interest and self-aggrandizement were the engines of society and the individual, then how could the testimony of claimants be believed?’ (Eghigian 2000). And they were not.
The result was that the profession began to be held in contempt. ‘Sensitivity to disbelief also helps explain the particular contempt in which workers held the certifying physicians of accident insurance boards. Insured workers saw these doctors as little more than “hired guns” of employers, intent only on finding a way to release insurers from their obligations’ (Eghigian 2000). In the unequal struggle between patient and doctor, the only weapon left for the patient was dislike and contempt, a legacy which certainly continues to the present. One might say that every psychiatrist or physician who has been insulted or harried by patients with symptoms or syndromes such as chronic back pain or chronic fatigue is reaping the legacy of the insurance doctors.