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Wessely on air at BBC 4 Radio

Dx Revision Watch

Suzy Chapman Owner of Dx Revision Watch
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Maybe we can send complaints to the twitter account of this...

To what end?

Wessely starts speaking (via radio car and in his capacity as President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists) at 16 mins 15 secs in from start of programme; he speaks for about 3 minutes.

He was brought in to comment on the Prime Minister's speech on mental health services, on CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) and mentions services for anorexia nervosa (following an earlier, brief interview with the mother of a daughter with the disorder).

Edited to add link for BBC site report on Theresa May's speech at the Charity Commission on mental health reforms:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38548567
 
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me/cfs 27931

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That would perhaps explain why this article, praising the results of the PACE Trial, coincidentally came out today:

Chronic fatigue syndrome patients have long-term benefits with these two CFS treatments: Study
http://www.belmarrahealth.com/chron...-long-term-benefits-two-cfs-treatments-study/
Looks like it's a regurgitation of the follow up study to PACE to me. Also, if I did buy products from Belmarra Health I'd stop now due to them hosting that nonsense on their site.
 

Dx Revision Watch

Suzy Chapman Owner of Dx Revision Watch
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That would perhaps explain why this article, praising the results of the PACE Trial, coincidentally came out today:

Chronic fatigue syndrome patients have long-term benefits with these two CFS treatments: Study
http://www.belmarrahealth.com/chron...-long-term-benefits-two-cfs-treatments-study/


It's a US and Canadian based outfit selling supplements.

Their sources for the article were the October, 28 2015 Oxford press release and the October 28, 2015 Lancet paper:

"Sources:
http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2015-10-28-treatments-offer-hope-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-cfsme-0
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(15)00317-X/fulltext
 
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me/cfs 27931

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Their sources for the article were the October, 28 2015 Oxford press release and the October 28, 2015 Lancet paper:
The timing (today Jan 9) just feels coincidental. Perhaps I'm just paranoid. :confused:

Looks like it's a regurgitation of the follow up study to PACE to me. Also, if I did buy products from Belmarra Health I'd stop now due to them hosting that nonsense on their site.
Belmarra Health regularly posts somatic CFS garbage on their website, and their articles usually come up at the top of a google news search. :eek:

Sorry, didn't mean to sidetrack this thread.
 

Dx Revision Watch

Suzy Chapman Owner of Dx Revision Watch
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The timing (today Jan 9) just feels coincidental. Perhaps I'm just paranoid. :confused:


Belmarra Health regularly posts somatic CFS garbage on their website, and their articles usually come up at the top of a google news search. :eek:

Sorry, didn't mean to sidetrack this thread.


I noticed they have this article on CFS on their site:

http://www.belmarrahealth.com/overcoming-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-steps-follow/

I can provide no evidence for you, but I doubt very much that the appearance of an article rehashed from an October 2015 press release for the Lancet PACE paper to promote sales of

"CLINICAL STRENGTH ENERGY COMPLEX"

and

"Daily Orac Powder"

has any relation to Simon Wessely giving a 3 minute sound bite on today's BBC's Radio 4 World at One programme, this afternoon, as part of the BBC's lunchtime coverage of Theresa May's speech on mental health reforms (amongst other political issues).

I am grateful to NexusOwl for bringing this sound bite to our attention.

But there was nothing about CFS, ME in the very brief comments from Simon Wessely on the Prime Minister's speech.
 
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Large Donner

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The issue of "destigmatising mental health" and child mental health services has been all over the BBC today.

Here are some of the points I picked up from the claims being made by the government today.

"3 children in each classroom have an undiagnosed mental health condition".

"We are introducing a first aid for mental health scheme in schools whereby people in schools will be trained in how to identify the first signs of a mental health condtion".

"Hospitals have been diverting their mental health budgets into physical health departments and we are going to start penalising them for doing that".

With Wessely and his likes all over this what this really means is the psychological profession who are yet unable to qualify what they mean by mental health and psychology etc and distinguish between metal health and misunderstood physical health have lobbied the hell out of government promising them financial savings and more control over peoples lives.

This is a disaster in the making, none of these people care about mental health whatever that is, they just care about market share and they are boosted by their own egotistical belief that they have some magical powers that can identify and treat "mental health conditions" without even defining and all agreeing what they mean by mental health.

Its chilling that its is being rolled out in schools whereby the dinner lady and the part time classroom assistant will be given the power via a day course in "the early signs of mental health", to single out your child into a state register whereby if you tell them to fuck off and leave your kid alone you will then no doubt be put on some kind of watch list for neglecting your childs' needs.

Secondly the claim that mental health budgets are being diverted in to physical health leaving mental health underfunded is right out of the BPS little red book on propaganda.

This is an attack on biomedical science also whereby many conditions could by state order be kept in the domain of "mental health," whilst at the same time real issues with social and development problems can be ignored and controlled under the guise of claiming more and more help is out there.

This, all by definition, means that more people are going to be "diagnosed" with a mental health condition, that's the very aim of the project under the claim that so many are going undiagnosed.

Just think about that in the context of the likes of the Wessely school and how narcissistic they are and in a society whereby science has been totally hijacked by corporate lobbyists who are in bed with government who keep telling us that their job is to shape society.
 
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Dr. Kimberley Goldsmith from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London added, “We found that participants who had originally been given SMC [standard medical care] or APT [adaptive pacing therapy] appeared to be doing as well as those who had CBT or GET in the longer term. However, as many had received CBT or GET after the trial, it does not tell us that these treatments have as good a long-term outcome as CBT and GET.”
So anecdotal evidence being used as a cornerstone for the defence of a supposedly well run clinical trial.
Professor Peter White concluded, “Finding no significant differences in the proportions getting worse over time is a reassurance for those who worry that some of these treatments might make things worse. But it is also a reminder that these treatments do not help everybody, and more research is needed into finding other treatments that help.”
Preparing the ground perhaps for the eventual exposure that "these treatments do not help everybody" actually equates to nobody, for patients with real ME/CFS.
 

Dx Revision Watch

Suzy Chapman Owner of Dx Revision Watch
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Full text: Theresa May’s ‘shared society’ speech

The Spectator

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/full-text-theresa-mays-shared-society-speech/

The section on mental health starts about half way down the web page.

(There is also an audio of the speech. The section on proposed mental health reform starts at 18:15.)

"We will pilot new approaches such as offering mental health first aid training for teachers and staff to help them identify and assist children experiencing mental health problems."

"...Fourth, we will rapidly expand the treatment available by investing £67.7 million in digital mental health services. Online therapy has the potential to transform the way mental health services are delivered by allowing people to check their symptoms, be triaged online and receive clinically-assisted therapy over the internet much more quickly and easily, assuming it is clinically appropriate. These treatments have been tested in other countries and they work. In the right cases, they can offer access to treatment far quicker than traditional services."
 
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A.B.

Senior Member
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Forget poverty, unemployment, having a poorly understood illness, pollution, income inequality: it's all a mental health issue. And it can be treated by sending the patient to a website to do some online CBT. If it doesn't work it's your own fault and you can't expect any more help. I predict that a new generation will grow up to hate psychiatry for bullying them with nonsense.
 

Dx Revision Watch

Suzy Chapman Owner of Dx Revision Watch
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https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...rd-view-for-mental-health-government-response

Policy paper

Five Year Forward View for Mental Health: government response

From: Department of Health, Public Health England and NHS England
First published: 9 January 2017
Part of: Mental health service reform

PDF, 272KB, 29 pages

The government’s response to the work of the Mental Health Taskforce and the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health report.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa...0/FYFV_mental_health__government_response.pdf



This report sets out the government’s response to the work of the Mental Health Taskforce. The taskforce report to NHS England, the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, is an independent and far-reaching overview of what modern mental health services should be.

The government will accept the taskforce report’s recommendations in full. This report provides full responses to each of the 58 recommendations made to government.

All of the recommendations, whether for NHS England or for government, will be taken forward. NHS England’s response to their recommendations can be found in Implementing the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health.
 

A.B.

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The conditions for which there will be the greatest reduction in cost are those for which depression or anxiety co-morbidity leads to a 50-100% increase in physical healthcare costs. The strongest evidence is in diabetes,
COPD, cardiovascular disease and for some people, chronic pain and medically unexplained symptoms. It is expected that over the longer term, fewer complications will result in reduced demand across the pathway.

Thanks to the work of the citizen scientists in the CFS community, we know that the results claimed for CFS are false. I suspect they are also false for most of the other conditions because the people promoting these ideas very consistently come across as dishonest ideologues that won't let reality get in the way of a nice success story.

So what they will actually achieve is mostly wasting money, discontent among patients, and possibly some harm. The psychologisation will probably also lead to worse health outcomes for certain conditions (there was a paper on rare disease which found that an initial psychological misdiagnosis delayed the correct diagnosis and effective treatment substantially)
 

Dx Revision Watch

Suzy Chapman Owner of Dx Revision Watch
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http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/e...a-mays-pledge-to-overhaul-mental-health-care/

January 9, 2017

expert reaction to Theresa May’s pledge to overhaul mental health care


Ms Cynthia Joyce, CEO of MQ, said:

(...)

Jon Spiers, CEO of Autistica, said:

(...)

Prof. Sir Simon Wessely, President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and Professor of Psychological Medicine, King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, said:

“She is right to focus on the importance of early years in shaping later mental health, and helping teachers to support troubled children must be the right thing.

“Her commitment to proper trials to look at how to strengthen the links between schools and local NHS mental health staff confirms that she accepts the importance of proceeding on the basis of sound evidence.

[Ed: Hah!]

“But the biggest challenge she faces is ensuring the £1.4bn pledged to child and adolescent mental health services actually reaches the frontline – which has not happened yet.

“We know that at least 350 more child and adolescent psychiatrists are needed just to deliver what the government has already promised for CAMHS and there is a long way to go before mental and physical health services are on an equal footing.”