This psychology student must have been asleep in the OCD lecture, because the way she writes about it in the above excerpt shows she doesn't really have a clue about it.
To make a statement like that, presumably you must be pretty knowledgable about OCD yourself; can you then please explain exactly why you think this student lacks the knowledge of OCD that you apparently possess?
A little bit OCD? The student seems to be confusing the everyday slangy meaning OCD has been given with the life-consuming condition she claims to be studying.
Hold on, I presumed you had some knowledge of OCD! But you seem to be unaware of some very basic facts: that obsessive-compulsive is a personality trait, and like all personality traits in psychology, is measured on a continuous scale, not a yes / no scale.
So the student knows her stuff: everyone does indeed have a bit of OCD.
Whereas you don't seem to (know your stuff, that is).
Some of the research I have read suggests to me that there could be a link between OCD and M.E
Oh really. What research?
I just put "obsessive-compulsive" and "chronic fatigue syndrome" into Google (
here), and the second hit was a
study that found a much higher prevalence of OCD in ME/CFS patients. That took me 60 seconds.
At my CFS self-help group there are 3 psychologists who are vociferous in their condemnation of how some of their colleagues have psychologised our physical illness. In the UK there should be a professional body that is equally disgusted with how some of their members are abusing a whole patient population. In any other profession a group of idiots causing so much damage would have been called to account long ago.
I agree with you that ME/CFS has be woefully over-psychologized — though not with respect to its symptoms, since quite a few ME/CFS symptoms are indeed psychological/mental (eg: brain fog, sound sensitivity, emotional lability, stress or discord sensitivity), but rather that ME/CFS has been wrongly psychologized in the sense of having been assumed to have psychological causes.
This idea that ME/CFS might be caused purely by psychological factors (an "all in the mind" disease) has been great disaster that tragically befell the world of ME/CFS research, and has probably set back the search for a cure or effective treatment for ME/CFS by 20 or 30 years. This is indeed a terrible thing that psychologists have done to ME/CFS patients.
However, there is no need to work out your anger by wantonly criticizing this young student (especially since your criticisms are not even correct).
Of course, if the student were to go off and use the questionnaire results to suggest that ME/CFS had a purely psychological cause, then yes, a few explanatory word to put her straight on that matter would be in order. But that would be a different situation.
There is so much contrary to basic science and research principles here that it almost looks like some kind of joke
Are you just attacking psychology because you don't like it, or is there some logic to your assertion that this questionnaire is contrary to basic science and research principles? If so, please explain your criticism (and without the weasel words please). The OCD questionnaire being used here is the Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory Revised (OCI-R). It looks like the standard sort of questionnaire used throughout psychological research. So please explain what specifically you think is wrong.
She should also realize that her very public and highly inaccurate declarations about the nature of OCD do not make her look good, nor will they reflect well on her in the future when potential employers are digging into her public history. It's never good to make a big spectacle of your ignorance.
As mentioned above, the psychology student is right regarding her description of OCD, and those here criticizing this description are wrong.
So it turns out that your own very public and highly inaccurate declarations do not make you look good, nor do they reflect well on the ME/CFS community. And as you said to the student: it is never good to make a big spectacle of your ignorance.