Angela Kennedy
Senior Member
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- 1,026
- Location
- Essex, UK
Great! Nice to see promise in a few anti-retrovirals with a synergistic effect. And the discussion and abstract give more accurate info on ME/CFIDS than the vast majority of articles.
I will be nitpicky here. A quote from the study:
It's nice that he at least qualifies his statement that GET is effective. But there are still problems with this statement.
He says that GET appears to exert a positive treatment effect by improving coping skills rather than reducing symptoms. He sites a 2000 article by Chalder and Wessely. One problem is the Wessely article doesn't support the statement. (It, of course, just says that GET is the greatest thing since sliced bread for reducing "CFS" symptoms).
A second problem is that there is no credible evidence (of which I am aware, pls correct me if mistaken) showing that GET helps Canadian or Fukuda described ME patients. Studies using the "Oxford" definition are patently invalid as this definition merely describes idiopathic chronic fatigue, not the discrete disease ME/CFIDS.
The third problem is that there is good evidence that GET causes substantial iatrogenic morbidity in a large percentage of ME patients.
The fourth problem is that it does not seem even theoretically possible that GET could improve coping skills (well administered CBT could theoretically improve coping skills and this is probably just a sloppy conflation of CBT and GET on the author's part).
Yes - and the 'proven' benefits is a wild claim if ever there was one about CBT/GET. "Proof"? REALLY? I'm always surprised to see that term get past in a 'science' paper. Scientists should know about the problem with that word, let alone in regard to CBT/GET.