Great new article on the damage done by "psychosomatic" diagnoses

[Snow Leopard]

I believe that Jen Brea was originally diagnosed with conversion disorder.

To avoid rumors and stuff, usually best to provide a source.

As it turns out, Jen has said so herself in a public forum:
http://blog.ted.com/illuminating-an-illness-without-end-fellows-friday-with-jennifer-brea/

 

[eafw]

Here is a link to the other article you mentioned:

Thanks Woolie, it was that one I was particularly after.

Had a quick browse of the others too. The "functional disorder" phrasing has been around for a while in the UK but the "number needed to offend" (from your third link) gives an insight into their attitudes - that the problem to them is the silly patients getting all offended rather than their own lies and incompetence.

 

[Tom Kindlon]

There's also a lot of work exmaining what words to use to best conceal the true nature of the diagnosis (functional, psychogenic, etc.) - I've included an example in the third link.

http://pmj.bmj.com/content/81/958/498.full.pdf html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1059131197800726
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC139034/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3073765/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/7604763/
http://archneur.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=800272
http://www.neurology.org/content/79/3/282.short main article and commentaries

(sorry, the last three links are to abstracts only - let me know if important, I might be able to interloan)

Regarding the third one, I had a letter published in BMJ USA (which was circulated to 100,000 US physicians but no longer exists) following posting a comment on the BMJ site. Others to have letters published on it were Ellen Goudsmit and Douglas Fraser. These short letters can be read here:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/215661815_The_need_for_history_(and_epistemology)_lessons

 

[Hell...Hath...No...Fury..]

Within that final link, i clicked on Simon Wessley which lead to his articles. I was intrigued to read but was too functionally offended in advance to read any.

If anything is guaranteed to create psychological symptoms in me, its the reading of the contents of his brain.

I think for many of us even just the anticipation of potentially having the life sentence of psychosomatic attached to our file at any future appointments we go to can cause mild lasting damage. So i can only imagine how destructive it is to the unlucky ones who have been branded with it already.

 

[Woolie]

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/215661815_The_need_for_history_(and_epistemology)_lessons

Thanks for this Tom, great letter - very crisp and to the point! Also nice to see similar views raised by various professionals.

 

[Tom Kindlon]

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/215661815_The_need_for_history_(and_epistemology)_lessons

Thanks for this Tom, great letter - very crisp and to the point! Also nice to see similar views raised by various professionals.

Thanks. It was written when I hadn't read many research papers on ME/CFS, MUS, etc. so didn't know references to mention.

 

[Woolie]

Some other quotes from the talk by Richard Barnum that @Cheshire posted above (thanks, Cheshire):

A full article by Richard Barnum on this topic is now freely available:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.helicon.vuw.ac.nz/pmc/articles/PMC4000178/

 

[GhostGum]

Reading through the comments I found this quite interesting,

“Imagine a world where we allow for medical uncertainty. We allow medically unexplained symptoms to be part of our medical puzzles without patient apology and without doctor frustration.”

This reminds me of one of the basic principles of Finnish “Open Dialogue”, something that i see as sadly lacking in conventional psychiatry: “tolerating uncertainty”. It is one of the seven basic principles of Open Dialogue and one of the key elements of Dialogic Practice.

“Tolerating uncertainty is at the heart of dialogue. It is thus a specific element and an element that defines the other elements. In Open Dialogue, there is the fundamental orientation of creating an organic understanding of the crisis with everyone’s input (polyphony). This stance is based on the assumption, as well as our experience, that every crisis has unique features. Hasty decisions and rapid conclusions about the nature of the crisis, diagnosis, medication, and the organization of the therapy are avoided. Further, we do not give ready-made solutions such as specific, preplanned therapeutic interventions to the family or the single person in crisis.”

http://umassmed.edu/psychiatry/globalinitiatives/opendialogue/

I am just constantly at a loss why concepts like this are not part of the foundation of psychiatry and therapy we find in western medicine. It seems medical professionals, especially psychiatrists, are far too busy trying to be certain about everything, because uncertainty is not a suitable place for doctors and such highly trained professionals to be in, or at least their ego's.

I think the problem is you end up with a random bunch of intellectuals who at some point just decided this would be their career path, who really have no concept of what therapy actually is or any real interest in the personal, philosophical and ethical depths of their chosen career.

 

[jimells]

the doctor can always say "you don’t know, you don't actually know what’s going on in the back of your head because its all unconscious"

Is there any actual evidence of this alleged "hidden mind"? The entire concept reminds me of the religious belief in demon possession.