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Simon Wessely in New Scientist

Messages
20
Location
london
I am wondering whether anyone on PR has ever had CBT at the Kings Collage Hospital Chronic Fatigue Unit (where S. Wessley is the Consultant Psychiatrist) and has kept any of the countless 'questionaires' that were used to assess our progress.

I had CBT there in 2007 and remember having to rate from 1 to 10, the 'belief' that my symptoms were caused by a real physical illness many times.........
 

Aurator

Senior Member
Messages
625
My comment was also a bit ironic ... pity irony does not come over well in text, doh.
My apologies, Alex; I did lay a false scent; taken at face value my tongue-in-cheek comments could very readily have been interpreted as a homily directed at Silverblade, which of course is not the way they were intended.
 

SilverbladeTE

Senior Member
Messages
3,043
Location
Somewhere near Glasgow, Scotland
Aurator
a fair trial, in THIS country?
hahahaha!!!
No I wouldn't want him tried by folk with bias against him,
but I sure as hell wouldn't want him tried by a system that gave a KNIGHTHOOD, either.
You may not have noticed how incredibly rotten the British legal system is?

millions of people have been left to suffer and die because of this kind of CRAP over the years, not just with M.E. and every time, the swine get away with it
and then more innocent folk get it in the neck later on
and so it goes on and on....
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
I had CBT there in 2007 and remember having to rate from 1 to 10, the 'belief' that my symptoms were caused by a real physical illness many times.........
Maybe you can answer a question. If you scored highly on that belief did it result in strong attempts at swaying this? I am sure it did, but it helps to have someone who has been through it confirm that, or refute it if something else happened. Recently it was revealed that at least one participant in the PACE trial was essentially intimidated into giving the answers they want. I would really like to have an idea of how common this is, including if its not common at all.
 
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Snowdrop

Rebel without a biscuit
Messages
2,933
I would bet, as we speak, that Sense about Science are preparing Simon's 'I discovered Rituximab' medal - such is the self-congratulatory, deluded state of UK medical establishment when it comes to ME. Truth takes a backseat. It is chilling.

Oh my gosh, I hadn't thought of it but now you mention it. . .

Upon reading my first response was hilarity, it seems so in keeping with Sir Simon's destiny as a hero. Reality is left in the dust behind his meteoric rise to ME healer stardom. Despite the tragedy of PWME suffering from Sir Simon's care the absurdity does make me laugh.

A knighthood is not enough. Will discovering Rituximab deliver a sainthood? Stay tuned. :p
 

Snowdrop

Rebel without a biscuit
Messages
2,933
I am wondering whether anyone on PR has ever had CBT at the Kings Collage Hospital Chronic Fatigue Unit (where S. Wessley is the Consultant Psychiatrist) and has kept any of the countless 'questionaires' that were used to assess our progress.

I had CBT there in 2007 and remember having to rate from 1 to 10, the 'belief' that my symptoms were caused by a real physical illness many times.........

A relatively new member SeraJ is seeing Dr White in London.
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
PS I also read, many years ago, of an anecdotal case of where the participant in a CBT/GET trial gave one answer, but the person recording it wrote down the opposite. I have seen this myself in another context, which I do not intend to elaborate. How common is this? Rare? The norm?
 

adreno

PR activist
Messages
4,841
I suspect the problem is not Wessely, as such. Had he not been there, another would have taken his role. The main problem is that we have been going through a medicinal dark age, lacking the knowledge and technologies to properly diagnose complex illnesses like ME, leaving grabbing room for the psychobabblers. I believe we are now started to get these technologies, and this will result in the present psychiatric models being seen as outdated.
 
Messages
20
Location
london
Alex, To answer your question....

When I had the CBT, ( it was 2009 not 2007 ) I was newly diagnosed...naive and desparate. I remember crying through most of it so its all a bit of a blur. I would, of course, have done or said anything to get better.

I will say that the counsellor was kind, and at the time, to have someone to talk to and listen to me was extremely helpful......I was not intimidated....the questionaires were given after the sessions and not referred back to as far as I can remember.

There was the sense though, that you were taking part in a formulaic process. It was laid down in the book 'Overcoming Chronic Fatigue' by Trudie Chalder, which aimed to reverse the following, which is familiar to us all now....
You had Glandular Fever,...you went to bed for too long,....you got deconditioned......and now you've got yourself CFS.

What I do remember is the expectation that I could somehow control my symptoms by behaving differently and stopping my catastrophizing.

There not pressure as such, more an assumption that if you did the right thing you would improve. I don't remember ever saying..."but I'm not better". It just kind of ended and that was it...

It reminded me of the time I tried hypnotherapy for a bout of insomnia ( pre ME) . It had no effect... but I pretended to be hypnotised because I felt sorry for the therapist....
 

jimells

Senior Member
Messages
2,009
Location
northern Maine
Presumably you'd be in favour of granting him a fair trial prior to the guilty verdict and the penal servitude: a jury picked entirely from long-term ME sufferers, a hooded judge, a right to any lawyer he wants from a list we will have been good enough to supply him with.

That pretty well describes the legal system in the US where poor people are concerned. Of course, few criminal defendants actually have a trial. The system does everything it can to coerce defendants into signing guilty pleas.

Those trial thingys are just so much trouble!
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
I suspect the problem is not Wessely, as such. Had he not been there, another would have taken his role. The main problem is that we have been going through a medicinal dark age, lacking the knowledge and technologies to properly diagnose complex illnesses like ME, leaving grabbing room for the psychobabblers. I believe we are now started to get these technologies, and this will result in the present psychiatric models being seen as outdated.
I blame Freud. Charcot had the base idea, but Freud expanded it and exported it all over the world. Added to this, psychiatry is more Dark Age than most medicine. Its still stuck in scientific approaches abandoned by the rest of science in the middle of last century, except of course those areas of science where people want to produce a claim to science without properly testing their theories i.e. fudging results (the polite term).

Somatization is a hangover from Freudian theory. Hysteria was first formally defined by Charcot. Most of Freud is discredited and has been largely buried by the tide of history, but this particular brand of psychogenic babble has survived and the medical profession is not doing anything to remove it from its holy book of doctrine.

Most of my heroes are doctors. So are most of my anti-heroes, aka villains. There are psychs in both categories. Those who are my heroes tend to embrace science. The anti-heroes make claim to science but eschew the scientific method.

Slow evolution of psychiatry has blatantly failed. In fact the reliability, based on the APAs own data, of many DSM5 categories is lower than for DSM III & IV. Its high time psychiatry had a revolution, "rational" evolution is not working.
 
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alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
I would, of course, have done or said anything to get better.
I think they take advantage of that. I keep hearing stories of people abandoned by these types of practitioners after a year or two without improvement. I am sorry you had to go through this.

I do understand we will try almost anything. Back when things were a bit different, and I was less well informed, I underwent both CBT and GET though not in an integrated program, and the CBT was classic CBT not the stuff being pushed by CFS clinics in the UK.
 

jimells

Senior Member
Messages
2,009
Location
northern Maine
Most of Freud is discredited and has been largely buried by the tide of history

That may be, but somebody needs to inform the current president of the APA. Not long ago he was a guest on CBC Radio's Sunday morning program, where he sang the praises of his hero Freud. Unfortunately the host was either too polite or too uninformed to question the baloney.
 

adreno

PR activist
Messages
4,841
I don't think Freud has been discredited at all. He is still highly popular. Freud is still being taught at universities, and psychodynamic therapy (based on freudianism) is besides CBT the most popular psychotherapy there is.
 
Messages
15,786
I don't think Freud has been discredited at all. He is still highly popular. Freud is still being taught at universities, and psychodynamic therapy (based on freudianism) is besides CBT the most popular psychotherapy there is.
A developmental psych class I took about 6 years ago skipped right over the Freud chapters without any discussion. The impression I got was that newer data and theories had replaced Freud - so he was only of historical interest, but not directly relevant to the course.
 
Messages
1,082
Location
UK
There was the sense though, that you were taking part in a formulaic process. It was laid down in the book 'Overcoming Chronic Fatigue' by Trudie Chalder, which aimed to reverse the following, which is familiar to us all now....
You had Glandular Fever,...you went to bed for too long,....you got deconditioned......and now you've got yourself CFS.....

How common is this scenario? Do many people actually take time off or rest with glandular? When i got it, my work hours at the gym increased from 40 hours to 50-60 (covering for others who were ill with the same thing) which continued for 6 months. I think i had one day off during that time and there wasn't a single day's bed rest before the big collapse. Becoming deconditioned during that time was a medical impossibility :confused: How do they squeeze the deconditioning factor into scenario's like that?

Weasle jumping on the rituximab bandwagon worries me because it could play out in a way of, those it helps, had a real physical illness all along and are safe (ish), and those it doesn't help are then fair game for the weasle school of piranha's where he'll welcome us with his long tentacled open arms to inflict his much needed tough love on us to make us snap out of our ridiculous ways :nerd: