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Research Check: can ‘Lightning Process’ coaching program help youths with chronic fatigue?

Hutan

Senior Member
Messages
1,099
Location
New Zealand
Yeah, that was my initial reaction. And then I read a bit and thought, well it could be worse.

The Lightning Process has ... also attracted criticism because it is a psychological intervention for a medical problem, which some sufferers perceive as undermining the severity of their symptoms.

The study had three notable weaknesses in its methods. These weaknesses limit how much can be made of the findings.

First, both the therapists and the clients knew which treatment they received. Hence, the zeal of the therapists or the desire of participants to please the researchers could have helped produce results in favour of the Process. Placebo effects may also have occurred: when participants think they’re getting a new, experimental treatment, placebo effects can lead to real or imagined improvements.

Second, the school attendance reports came from the young people themselves. It would have been more valuable to gather this information from official records.

Third, the Process participants received 12 extra hours of treatment. Hence, it’s not clear whether they improved more due to the content of that extra treatment or due to receiving more treatment.

But then I read a bit more. And sighed again.
 
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3,263
.First, both the therapists and the clients knew which treatment they received. Hence, the zeal of the therapists or the desire of participants to please the researchers could have helped produce results in favour of the Process. Placebo effects may also have occurred: when participants think they’re getting a new, experimental treatment, placebo effects can lead to real or imagined improvements.
Everybody seems to have gotten so clever lately at noticing that participants weren't blind to treatment and that this might affect the outcome.

But no-one was saying this about CBT and GET. Didn't get a mention by anyone other than patients and a tiny group of sympathetic researchers. Neuroskeptic, who's quite perceptive in other areas, didn't notice this problem at all.

Its like some sort of blind spot that everyone seems to have. As if their belief that CBT and GET are plausible is enough to blind them to the problem. Yet they can see the problem so clearly when critiquing obvious 'woo'.

As someone else said in relation to David Colqhuhoun on another thread: a lot of these science critics can only hit the mark if its an easy target.
 

Alvin2

The good news is patients don't die the bad news..
Messages
2,996
Funnily enough no-one asks for the mechanism by which these ‘treatments’ operate, not even the BPS mechanisms that are supposed to be addressed by them.
Of course not, when you can shame people by claiming illness in in their head explanation is not required. Bullies have more apologists and enablers then enemies.
 
Messages
70
Of course not, when you can shame people by claiming illness in in their head explanation is not required. Bullies have more apologists and enablers then enemies.
Yes, but what are the mechanisms ‘in the head’ and where is the research/evidence to show the mechanism by which they can trigger/heal illnesses? ie any theory and evidence for causation. None offered either in theory or backed by evidence.
 

Alvin2

The good news is patients don't die the bad news..
Messages
2,996
Yes, but what are the mechanisms ‘in the head’ and where is the research/evidence to show the mechanism by which they can trigger/heal illnesses? ie any theory and evidence for causation. None offered either in theory or backed by evidence.
Thats my point, they don't care, they just want to make themselves feel important and believe their lies.
 

user9876

Senior Member
Messages
4,556
Everybody seems to have gotten so clever lately at noticing that participants weren't blind to treatment and that this might affect the outcome.

But no-one was saying this about CBT and GET. Didn't get a mention by anyone other than patients and a tiny group of sympathetic researchers. Neuroskeptic, who's quite perceptive in other areas, didn't notice this problem at all.

Its like some sort of blind spot that everyone seems to have. As if their belief that CBT and GET are plausible is enough to blind them to the problem. Yet they can see the problem so clearly when critiquing obvious 'woo'.

As someone else said in relation to David Colqhuhoun on another thread: a lot of these science critics can only hit the mark if its an easy target.

When reading some of the comments on Smile I get the impression that some people don't know what to say. They know it is bad and formed from pseudo-science but at the same time they don't want to be criticizing other academics. So they point out issues that they would normally ignore with CBT but they only seem to make a small point of doing so. I can feel their confusion - perhaps because they use similar methods?

It doesn't help that the LP intervention is not fully explained and hence the really high likelihood of bias is not as obvious as it should be.

When people criticize LP because it is based on NLP which has no scientific basis it did make me wonder what the scientific basis for CBT actually is. Looking at the history in Wikipedia it seems to come from behaviourism and I thought psychology had moved on from that.
 
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3,263
did make me wonder what the scientific basis for CBT actually is
The B does stand for behaviourism. The CBT treatments that are probably effective are the ones based on the B. Like systematic desensitisation for spider phobias (based on the idea of decoupling the classically conditioned association of spiders with fear). The B also stands for any approach that builds in some sort of reward for good behaviour or a withdrawal of reward for bad (that's the other one, operant conditioning). For example, interventions for bedwetting use a lot of rewards, and those for really troublesome kids involve identifying the rewards they get from bad behaviour, withdrawing them, and rewarding better behaviours.

Behaviourism is not fashionable, but its damned good if you ask me. Good careful science, measuring patterns of responding and seeing how rewards, punishments, stimulus pairings influence behaviour. Lots of things we 'know' about human nature are from behaviourism - like the idea that rewards reinforce desired behaviours more than the threat of punishment.

Its the C part that's more problematic. Its founded on the idea that a key cause of psychological problems is maladaptive/negative thought patterns. The idea of the C part is to "correct" these negative thought patterns by bringing them to the person's awareness, challenging them, and replacing them with better cognitions. That will fix the depression. anxiety, whatever. The therapist might use a range of tools here including practical exercises.

A big part of the original model of CBT was based on the idea that unhappy people had a distorted reality, in which they saw things as more negative than they are - and needed to be 'corrected'. This part of the foundation has been challenged, since depressed people's assessments of their life and future possibilities tend to actually be more realistic that non-depressed people's.

There is also a huge assumption underlying the 'C' part - that thoughts and cognitions 'drive' the problems we see in anxiety, depression, etc., so intervening on them will change the situation. But what if these thoughts, cognitions are a by-product of the problem, they don't play a major causal role? Then the whole idea collapses. I think that's a very real possibility.
 
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Sean

Senior Member
Messages
7,378
There is also a huge assumption underlying the 'C' part - that thoughts and cognitions 'drive' the problems we see in anxiety, depression, etc., so intervening on them will change the situation. But what if these thoughts, cognitions are a by-product of the problem, they don't play a major causal role? Then the whole idea collapses. I think that's a very real possibility.
There is another huge underlying and very problematic assumption in the 'C' part: that the therapist can reliably classify thoughts into good and bad, that they have some grand sweeping insight and understanding of the human condition that grants them the power to safely judge the meaning and value of thoughts.

It's arrogant delusional bollocks.
 
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3,263
that the therapist can reliably classify thoughts into good and bad, that they have some grand sweeping insight and understanding of the human condition that grants them the power to safely judge the meaning and value of thoughts.
Yea, CBT is inherently 'corrective'. If a therapist tells you they don't attempt to 'correct' the client's thoughts/cognitions, they just help support the client to find their own way through their problems, then they are not doing actual CBT.
 

Snowdrop

Rebel without a biscuit
Messages
2,933
A big part of the original model of CBT was based on the idea that unhappy people had a distorted reality,

It has been my personal experience that happy people are just as capable of distorting reality in ways that prevent them from assessing a situation for what it is. Usually this distorted thinking results in harm to others rather than themselves. Selecting out people who are seen as negative is a political agenda.

That's not to say that people who are depressed can't benefit from CBT. I think that it's possible they can.
 

Kenshin

Senior Member
Messages
161
"The Lightning Process has ... also attracted criticism because it is a psychological intervention for a medical problem, which some sufferers perceive as undermining the severity of their symptoms." - And Type of symptoms, severity and type of symtoms. The symptoms we suffer from are common in physical diseases, not one's that can be improved by psychological intervention.
 
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13,774
"The Lightning Process has ... also attracted criticism because it is a psychological intervention for a medical problem, which some sufferers perceive as undermining the severity of their symptoms."

Phil Parker keeps claiming it's not a psychological intervention anyway.

This was a pretty weak piece of analysis tbh. The fact the LP is loopy leads to some instinctive scepticism, but there's not much willingness to really dig into all the problems.