I hadn't seen this posted anywhere, this story is a few weeks old. Observant is a Dutch magazine that has a section called 'myth busters', which is "a series in which academics shoot down popular myths on complex topics". In this article Cohen Tervaert explains why ME is NOT a mental illness.
This is pretty significant, as Cohen Tervaert is a member of the ME Committee of the Dutch Health Council, responsible for creating new guidelines on treatment of ME in the Netherlands. (The majority of the members is strongly in favor of the BPS approach. There is a petition to oppose the composition of the Committee. It can be signed until the end of this month, so if you haven't yet, PLEASE DO! here)
In the meantime, both Mark Vink and Chalder/Sharpe/White reacted to Cohen's article.
Original article by Cohen Tervaert: Myth: ME is a mental illness
http://www.observantonline.nl/Home/...w/articleId/12027/Myth-ME-is-a-mental-illness
Mark Vink's reaction (in Dutch):
http://www.observantonline.nl/Home/.../Gedrags-en-bewegingstherapie-zijn-schadelijk
Google Translate link: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http://www.observantonline.nl/Home/Artikelen/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/12100/Gedrags-en-bewegingstherapie-zijn-schadelijk&edit-text=&act=url
Chalder/Sharpe/White's reaction: 'Myth-busting the myth busting'
http://www.observantonline.nl/Home/...w/articleId/12101/Myth-busting-a-myth-busting
This is pretty significant, as Cohen Tervaert is a member of the ME Committee of the Dutch Health Council, responsible for creating new guidelines on treatment of ME in the Netherlands. (The majority of the members is strongly in favor of the BPS approach. There is a petition to oppose the composition of the Committee. It can be signed until the end of this month, so if you haven't yet, PLEASE DO! here)
In the meantime, both Mark Vink and Chalder/Sharpe/White reacted to Cohen's article.
Original article by Cohen Tervaert: Myth: ME is a mental illness
http://www.observantonline.nl/Home/...w/articleId/12027/Myth-ME-is-a-mental-illness
ME is a dreadful, but not a mental illness, says Cohen Tervaert. “While ME is often haughtily put down as being nonsense and whining, the leading American National Academy of Medicine concluded in a voluminous report that it is a ‘systemic disease’.
In Norway too, where a lot of research is being carried out and where even the prime minister made an appeal to not leave this group of patients out in the cold, they have arrived at the same conclusions.
Various systems in the body either don't work or don't work properly. The immune system fails, there are hormonal changes, patients often sleep poorly and energy production in the cells doesn't function well. A hypothesis is that that energy production goes into hibernation. This is an attractive idea: they have no energy and are therefore incapable of producing it.”
Another hypothesis is that the autonomous nervous system (that man cannot control with his mind) is in a permanent state of peril, making the patient highly sensitive to stimuli.
Mark Vink's reaction (in Dutch):
http://www.observantonline.nl/Home/.../Gedrags-en-bewegingstherapie-zijn-schadelijk
Google Translate link: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http://www.observantonline.nl/Home/Artikelen/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/12100/Gedrags-en-bewegingstherapie-zijn-schadelijk&edit-text=&act=url
In short: It's in everyone's interest that ME patients go back to work as soon as possible and no longer be dependent on benefits.Re-analyzes of the PACE trial have now shown that this will never happen with behavioral and movement therapy.
Chalder/Sharpe/White's reaction: 'Myth-busting the myth busting'
http://www.observantonline.nl/Home/...w/articleId/12101/Myth-busting-a-myth-busting
However one chooses to define recovery, the main findings of the trial stand - that CBT and GET are both safe and effective in reducing fatigue and improving functioning. In such a chronic and disabling illness, it is good to have a hopeful message for patients that, like previous researchers, we found not one but two treatments that are moderately effective and safe for patients with CFS/ME. To suggest that this is not the case is to propagate a myth.