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S. Wessely contradiction on forced treatment/benefit sanctions?

Yogi

Senior Member
Messages
1,132
I remember reading this article in 2015. I forgot to add it to PR then.

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...-people-mental-health-problems-work-treatment

I really would love to hear opinions of people here about this complete 100% contradiction and hypocrisy.

In this article he says mental patients should not be forced into treatment and should not be linked to benefits. However his 30 year career on ME has been precisely to do just that. He changed ME into CFS and developed forced treatment of GET for our false illness beliefs. He advised insurers and DWP to force claimants into GET and stop benefits for not only not undertaking the treatments but for not recovering which culminated in as we know the PACE trial.

I saw it on Twitter being tweeted by SW last night.



And on this post but feel it deserves its own thread.

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...nti-science-brs2017.51066/page-13#post-843463

I agree I really liked Wessely in that article and he is reasonable, compassionate and likeable!

Perhaps the mods @Kina could please move over @Valentijn and @TiredSam posts here as they they deserve to be in their own thread and are very helpful as they provide the evidence to back what i am saying and and a good explanation from tiredsam. I could not multi quote valentinjin's post fully here.

SW really is an enigma.

He either doesn't have any self insight into his contradictions and is delusional.

Or one of the most bare faced lying shameful dangerous propagandists using his psychiatric training to manipulate everyone (including the medical professionals, media and politicians). And this is the best PR piece ever to cover his tracks and show how nice a guy he is to the world whilst hiding the reality of his actions as the person most responsible for those very things which are exactly those he condemns in the article and concealing his sick and cruel personality defects which have caused harm on an industrial scale and unprecedented in modern medicine.

I know which one he is. Or he could be both.

What you think?????
 
Messages
2,158
I think the problem for us is that Wessely puts us in a different category to the mental illness sufferers he is talking about in that article.

He sheds his crocodile tears about 'real' mental illness, while at the same time makes fun of and denigrates ME sufferers because all we have is 'false illness beliefs'.

In other words he thinks we are only imagining we are ill. We are lazy scroungers in his eyes who need to be persuaded/brainwashed into getting off our backsides, doing some exercise, and getting back to work, whereas people with 'real' psychiatric conditions need support.
 
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keenly

Senior Member
Messages
814
Location
UK
I think the problem for us is that Wessely puts us in a different category to the mental illness sufferers he is talking about in that article.

He sheds his crocodile tears about 'real' mental illness, while at the same time makes fun of and denigrates ME sufferers because all we have is 'false illness beliefs'.

In other words he thinks we are only imagining we are ill. We are lazy scroungers in his eyes who need to be persuaded/brainwashed into getting off our backsides, doing some exercise, and getting and back to work, whereas people with 'real' psychiatric conditions need support.

And what evidence does he use to show they exist? NONE. There are no tests showing most of the pseudo diseases psychiatrists have invented exist. The man is a deranged, hypocritical fool.

There is far more evidence showing physiological abnormalities in CFS patients than there is in the types of illnesses he claims to deal with, or be interested in. ADHD anyone? Being happy is an illness, did you not know. You need drugs. Diet plays no part, hey? I could go on.
 
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TiredSam

The wise nematode hibernates
Messages
2,677
Location
Germany
I'm sure Wessely has an article or paper to whip out for every occasion, and is able to position himself on any side of any argument as it suits him.

There seems to be general agreement that people with mental health issues need support, nobody can really disagree with that sentiment, and Wessely can say it often and loud and appear to be a great chap.

Unfortunately what he and his colleagues do is then assert their right to define "mental illness" and "support", and defend that right at all costs. So "mental illness" includes ME and anything else they say. "Support" means GET or CBT or whatever rehabilitation for mental health issues they decree, under threat of benefit / insurance payment denial.

So whilst they are keen to support those with mental illnesses, the penalty for disagreeing with their definintion of "mental illness" (I've got ME and it's not an illusory belief) or "support" (excuse me but I've found that exercise makes me worse) is a merciless retribution, you can be taken out of your wheelchair and thrown into a swimming pool, left to lie in your own urine and faeces, sectioned, denied health care for other health issues you may have, denied benefits etc etc, just for not accepting the category of "illness" or "support" assigned to you. It is a medical dictatorship that will tolerate no dissent, run by a network of back-scratching megalomaniacs with absolute power.

I've often asked on this forum why, if we have a mental illness, the appropriate treatment is bullying, name-calling, ridiculing and contempt. Today I think I've worked out the answer. People who accept they have a mental illness get the consideration and compassion, or at least general agreement that that's what they should be getting. But for anyone with a mental illness who denies having one, anything goes.

This is not just Wessely, it appears to be human nature and acceptable at all levels of the system, and no-one seems bothered. Nurses are free to decide not to help you to the toilet or help you eat, a whole hospital may have a culture of abusing ME patients. But it's ok, because the patient is just deluded, attention-seeking, out to gain secondary benefits, unco-operative and wasting everybody's time when there are really ill people to take care of and resources are tight. The response from medical staff is often one of righteous indignant fury - we are being anti-social and anyone is entitled to put us in our place on behalf of the those good, hard-working or genuinely ill members of society, which is everyone else except us.

Wessely and colleagues have created this framework, this narrative, and assigned us our place in it. And if we try to get out of our box they will use all means at their disposal to put us back in it - their livelihoods depend on it (did I read a report recently of Peter White actually saying that to a patient?). And it's easy to do - all they have to do is appeal to human nature - the natural indignation felt by members of society when they discover that some deluded or faking malingerer is trying to take them for a ride. Cue Rod Liddle, Katie Hopkins, the BBC under the guidance of the SMC etc to make sure everyone is warned about us.

And now they are trying to expand their power until soon everyone will be told that they have a mental health issue - BPS definition, requiring BPS treatment, under threat of BPS advised sanctions. What percentage of school children is Esther Crawley claiming need her help now, as she moves on to sniff around kidney patients? MUS springing up everywhere we look.
 

TiredSam

The wise nematode hibernates
Messages
2,677
Location
Germany
I can't help finding the scale of Wessely's achievement pretty impressive. He managed to portray us in exactly such a way, and get his fingers into so many pies, that for a long time all he had to do was lick the pie off those same fingers and click them to bring down unlimited opprobrium and scorn upon us, making sure our voices were dismissed and enabling him to retain complete control of our plight as unquestioned expert authority. As evil geniuses go, that's not bad. He has managed to mind-fuck a whole country and come out of it with a knighthood.

What happens to dictators when their dictatorship starts crumbling? I believe complete delusional denial accompanied by increasingly erratic statements and behaviour is customary, in front of an ever-increasing audience of baffled, sadly amused onlookers.
 
Messages
724
Location
Yorkshire, England
(Post moved from EC thread)

A Wessely quote from the article:
Linking benefits to treatment sounds suspiciously like a coercive measure to “incentivise” people who would not otherwise have had treatment to accept it. And if so, it is legally problematic. The people affected by this policy may turn up to receive the treatment in question and therefore seem to be consenting to it. But consent to treatment must be free from undue influence, otherwise it is legally meaningless.

Note here the use of the word legally. Ask what difference substituting ethically for legally makes to the statement.

A carefully written piece is an example of thinking in slow motion. Either the piece was sloppily written, or the choice of words indicates the true feelings of the writer. Neither looks good for the author from my point of view.

There are plenty of things that can be done legally but are ethically wrong, depending on whether you are concerned with doing what is right, or what might or might not be seen and punished.
 

CFS_for_19_years

Hoarder of biscuits
Messages
2,396
Location
USA
've often asked on this forum why, if we have a mental illness, the appropriate treatment is bullying, name-calling, ridiculing and contempt. Today I think I've worked out the answer. People who accept they have a mental illness get the consideration and compassion, or at least general agreement that that's what they should be getting. But for anyone with a mental illness who denies having one, anything goes.

During the Salem Witch Trials, if one was accused of being a witch and then went along with the verdict, the death sentence wasn't carried out. The accused often admitted they were witches just to spare their lives. If the accused kept denying they were witches they were hanged, or in one case, pressed to death. The similarities to how ME/CFS patients are treated are quite striking.
 

TiredSam

The wise nematode hibernates
Messages
2,677
Location
Germany
During the Salem Witch Trials, if one was accused of being a witch and then went along with the verdict, the death sentence wasn't carried out. The accused often admitted they were witches just to spare their lives. If the accused kept denying they were witches they were hanged, or in one case, pressed to death. The similarities to how ME/CFS patients are treated are quite striking.
In Germany I know a few ME sufferers who have given up the battle and accepted a diagnosis of depression just to get half a pension. The alternative is to keep insisting you have ME, that it's biological, that you can't work, keep appealing the refusals and keep banging your head against a wall until you run out of money. The you say "ok, I'm depressed" just to get half a pension.

EDIT: Did I mention that even with depression, you have to have tried rehab before your pension is granted? And rehab for depression includes exercise of course, because it makes depressed people feel better. Sorry, forgot that bit.
 
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antherder

Senior Member
Messages
456
During the Salem Witch Trials, if one was accused of being a witch and then went along with the verdict, the death sentence wasn't carried out. The accused often admitted they were witches just to spare their lives. If the accused kept denying they were witches they were hanged, or in one case, pressed to death. The similarities to how ME/CFS patients are treated are quite striking.

Thanks for mentioning this. After reading TiredSam's post, I kept thinking, "Now why does that scenario sound so familiar... where have I heard it before?" but I just couldn't sift through the brain fog to retrieve it...

Curiously enough, someone asked me years ago if I was a practising witch... (I'm not, just so you know...or is that the wrong thing to say...???)
 

Chrisb

Senior Member
Messages
1,051
The you say "ok, I'm depressed" just to get half a pension.

It is a coincidence that you should say this. Recent threads had set me musing on how the statements of a certain school of psychiatry were to be judged, not by conventional truth values, as true or false, but as what Austin called "performative utterances".

"Mightn't they perhaps be intended not to report facts but to influence people in this way or that, or to let off steam in this way or that." (Philosophical Papers) We know all about the latter uses here.

Thus, for example, the statement that x% of people with CFS recover with CBT and GET may not be intended to be factually true but to bring about the effect which is desired, whether in the patient or those who commission medical services. The problem is that it then becomes difficult to know which statements are intended to be performative and which to be judged by truth values.

There are many other examples, but I do not do long posts. That is quite enough for me.

Clearly the "ok, I'm depressed" statement falls into this class of performative utterance. It is not intended to be either true or false.
 

Solstice

Senior Member
Messages
641
Thanks for mentioning this. After reading TiredSam's post, I kept thinking, "Now why does that scenario sound so familiar... where have I heard it before?" but I just couldn't sift through the brain fog to retrieve it...

Curiously enough, someone asked me years ago if I was a practising witch... (I'm not, just so you know...or is that the wrong thing to say...???)

Burn her!!

;)