It has provided quite a few giggles on social media elsewhere. However, given that pwme are more aware than most re how difficult life can be .. I think we perhaps ought to take a moment to ponder that this could be an expression of someone under a huge amount of strain ?
Opinion Piece: Current Psychiatry and its Discontents
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It has provided quite a few giggles on social media elsewhere. However, given that pwme are more aware than most re how difficult life can be .. I think we perhaps ought to take a moment to ponder that this could be an expression of someone under a huge amount of strain ?
arewenearlythereyet
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Absolutely .....hmmmm.......no sorry didn't work
Ok then. Fair dos. Danger: CSF samples.
JaimeS
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Now, that's the right question.
It's one of those things we've discussed extensively here. If the point is really that CFS sufferers are mentally ill, then the disdain, aggression, and mockery they've received from the psychiatric profession is beyond the pale. It's also pure hysteria to claim that patient communities like Phoenix Rising are riddled with death threats -- where it seems we mostly discuss science and poke fun at these guys.
Because it would not be okay to say about, e.g., schizophrenics, or people with depressive disorder, what is said about individuals with CFS, there must be the supposition that we are in fact faking illness due to 'secondary gains' -- a hypothesis espoused by Wessley often. So we're sane, we're just trying to get all of that sweet chronic illness cash. You know how it is.
But it's not reasonable or socially acceptable to talk about secondary gains in any meaningful way, since government assistance in most countries lets you pick a run-down shack to live in, or groceries to eat, but not both. Who would willingly give up their entire lives like that, for money that isn't enough to live on? 'Secondary gains' assumes cash or sympathy or extra help, which are things that -- if you read PR boards -- you know doesn't generally reflect reality.
So patients are inventing disabling symptoms for secondary gains that don't exist.
That brings us back to 'these patients must actually be crazy', and we've completed the nutty loop: that in our society you don't treat people with mental disorders the way that BPS folk feel comfortable treating us.
These are not people who do a lot of meta-analysis re: why they think what they think, and how it informs their actions, which I'm sure comes as a surprise to no one.
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If we killed people just for being stupid and greedy there wouldn't be many people left,
they should just bugger off and do something useful and stop interfering. outside of that, not bothered about them.
Why does he object to the idea of consumerism outright, don't we have some choice in how we interact
with medical services and the democratic processes regulating them ?
they should just bugger off and do something useful and stop interfering. outside of that, not bothered about them.
Why does he object to the idea of consumerism outright, don't we have some choice in how we interact
with medical services and the democratic processes regulating them ?
JaimeS
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It's threatening to have your ignorance exposed.
A.B.
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"The moment Professor White realises that the results from the PACE trial were not actually positive as he had believed."
I always thought forensic psychiatrists were much better than this fellow.
Probably an essential requirement for the role. Rubbish at your chosen profession, so get a job where your paymasters can tell you what you should be saying.
The technical terminology for this is ... having ones head stuck up one's own *rse.
Forbin
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Oh, my God! I just remembered that I belong to the CSF!
At my high school, if you graduated with a high GPA, you were made a member of the California Scholarship Federation. You also got this nifty gold "stole" to wear at graduation.
http://csf-cjsf.org/
At my high school, if you graduated with a high GPA, you were made a member of the California Scholarship Federation. You also got this nifty gold "stole" to wear at graduation.
http://csf-cjsf.org/
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me/cfs 27931
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That was exactly what I thought of also. California Scholarship Federation.
Perhaps being a CSF member is a CFS risk factor.
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Cheshire
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Do someone know if there are recent examples of psychiatrists attacking a whole population of patients like this?
I can't imagine someone saying publicly such things about patients suffering from depression or anxiety.
I can't imagine someone saying publicly such things about patients suffering from depression or anxiety.
Yeah, I won't be feeling any sympathy when they finally get fully exposed for the vicious fraudulent scum that they really are.
It is not just the ME/CFS world they are savaging, we are being used a Trojan horse to impose this crap upon the whole of society.
Wessely, et al, were never concerned about our welfare, but with how to use our suffering to further their ideology and power. As strongly evidenced by the fact that they went in way too hard, way too early on ME/CFS, long before there had been proper testing of their basic hypothesis.
Here is an example of why we so love the insurance industry, and those who take its shilling:
Ministers accused of cover-up after keeping no record of secret speeches made at luxury weekend with insurance bosses
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4396112/Ministers-accused-cover-luxury-weekend.html#ixzz4dpWjzLtb
I know this doesn't deal with ME, and it is only the Daily Mail, but if you cannot find the evidence, look for evidence of a course of conduct.
Of course it may all be true that no records exist. But, if so, the ministers should be sacked and the Permanent Secretary redeployed. Manning a helpline somewhere in the regions might be appropriate.
Ministers accused of cover-up after keeping no record of secret speeches made at luxury weekend with insurance bosses
- Two ministers say they made speeches from memory and did not keep a record
- Days after trip government announced abandonment of annuity scheme
- The news sparked fears they were lobbied by the industry during the getaway
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4396112/Ministers-accused-cover-luxury-weekend.html#ixzz4dpWjzLtb
I know this doesn't deal with ME, and it is only the Daily Mail, but if you cannot find the evidence, look for evidence of a course of conduct.
Of course it may all be true that no records exist. But, if so, the ministers should be sacked and the Permanent Secretary redeployed. Manning a helpline somewhere in the regions might be appropriate.
Woolie
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Absence of evidence.... hmmm, doesn't that prove the problem is psychological????
JaimeS
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Yes, actually. This seems to be the constellation:
1) Disease appears to be increasing in prevalence (whether it is or not, it's suddenly in the news / ppl are more aware it exists)
2) Disease is 'complex' (that is, there is no one-pill treatment / cure that exists at the time)
3) Disease is not visible from the outside -- patient doesn't look sick until disease is VERY advanced, even if they appear to have overt signs/symptoms
4) Disease is neurological -- if not in origin, then there are notable neuro sequelae
5) Disease affects a more sociologically vulnerable population
This seems to be the magical formula that ensures patients will be dehumanized. Note that #4 and #5, while rendering dehumanization more likely, are 'optional' components to the equation. The rest seem obligatory.
- Cancer -- a disease of the "personality" that comes from holding back emotions. (You read right: suppressed emotions turn into tumors. People are honestly still saying it.)
- Parkinson's -- due to too much (ahem) 'alone time', an accompanying perversion and lack of self-control implied
- AIDS -- a psychological reaction to expulsion from society, in a population considered psychologically damaged in the first place
How popular these illness attributions were at the time is also something that is honestly hard to say. If you look up histories of Parkinson's, you find that they tend to ignore the etiologic descriptions that we would find comical or horrifying today: it's a bit of a whitewashing of medical thought. At the same time, perhaps only a few physicians and researchers believed this? Still, their work was published in respectable journals, so at the very least they were considered an interesting counterpoint to the prevalent ideas of the day.
That's an interesting statement. How so?
J
JaimeS
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I should add that psychosomatic medicine at its best -- or in its original intent? -- was not meant to 'explain away' physical disorders but to contextualize them within the framework of society: how societal attitude affects treatment and how the patient feels about his or her illness, the way that stressors impact function, that sort of thing. I still see papers like this, and they are not complete drek. They're a marriage of sociology and medicine. Unfortunately, they seem to drown under a pile of "emotions cause tumors" and "all the body is controlled by conscious thought" 'research'.
-J
-J