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Opinion Piece: Current Psychiatry and its Discontents

lilpink

Senior Member
Messages
988
Location
UK
Well I've had a right laugh reading this thread. Thanks to all.

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 ?
 

lilpink

Senior Member
Messages
988
Location
UK
Absolutely .....hmmmm.......no sorry didn't work :redface::redface::redface::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

Ok then. Fair dos. Danger: CSF samples.

24057tn.jpg
 

JaimeS

Senior Member
Messages
3,408
Location
Silicon Valley, CA
Now, that's the right question. :thumbsup:

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.

they-see-me-rolling-they-hating-funny-wheelchair.png


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. :rolleyes:
 
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ash0787

Senior Member
Messages
308
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 ?
 
Messages
2,391
Location
UK
My experience with the psychiatrists in Australia who work in this area (ie, on workers compensation claims) is that they are extremely incompetent and ill-informed (even for psychiatrists).
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.
 

me/cfs 27931

Guest
Messages
1,294
Oh, my God! I just remembered that I belong to the CSF!

At my high school, if you gradated 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/
That was exactly what I thought of also. California Scholarship Federation.

Perhaps being a CSF member is a CFS risk factor. :D
 
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Sean

Senior Member
Messages
7,378
None of these quacks can stand on the science, so they result to slandering the people who create and support the science. They are utterly vile and toxic human beings with no sense of morals or ethics.
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.
 

Chrisb

Senior Member
Messages
1,051
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
  • 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.
 

JaimeS

Senior Member
Messages
3,408
Location
Silicon Valley, CA
Do someone know if there are recent examples of psychiatrists attacking a whole population of patients like this?

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.
I won't list MS here because based on what research I've managed to do, most claimed MS was often "mistaken" for hysterical paralysis, not that it WAS hysterical.

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.

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.

That's an interesting statement. How so?

J
 

JaimeS

Senior Member
Messages
3,408
Location
Silicon Valley, CA
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