Psychology Today Opinion piece regarding the IOM release

[msf]

I'm not sure if someone has already posted it, but here is another brilliant article by the 'professor':

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/how-everyone-became-depressed/201502/depression-role-women

 

[msf]

It wouldn't let me post on the ME article, so I posted on the depression in women article instead...I don't usually do this, because I think newspapers and magazines like controversies like this, but I just couldn't resist the chance to call him a moron.

 

[Dx Revision Watch]

Its time to make a stand against this hatred however we can, i agree with previous posters on zero tolerance. Enough is enough! His original blog should be spread far and wide showing what we have to put up with. But at the same time i'd hate to give him any more attention than he's already got because he deserves no attention.

But one thing is certain, Enough is Enough.

I'm not involved in advocacy as a patient, but as carer of someone approaching their 16th year of illness, who has lost all their adolescence and 20s to this illness. One thing that really hacks me off in all this is that it is so often left to patients and carers to counter the type of totally unacceptable content that Dr Shorter has published. Why do so many clinicians, researchers and patient organizations sit back and leave this to patients to deal with?

I understand that a copy of Shorter's initial commentary has been brought to the attention of Prof Stephen Holgate. Holgate has, on several occasions, been openly critical of perceived patient hostility towards some researchers/clinicians.

But he needs to be aware of just what professionals are capable of.

 

[alex3619]

Why do so many clinicians, researchers and patient organizations sit back and leave this to patients to deal with?

This is why I say the entire medical profession is responsible. This is different from saying they are to blame, and different from claiming specific individual responsibility.

Medical authorities jump on quackery when it rises outside the profession. How about when it rises inside the profession, and has support?

 

[Bob]

Although this person has deeply offensive views, I'm of the opinion that he's a nobody. There are always going to be uninformed idiots spouting out offensive nonsense in relation to any subject. This particular 'nobody' has a position of authority, and complaints can be made. Our biggest foes are much cleverer than him, and would never publish anything so blatantly offensive. I think his rantings are helpful for us to clearly demonstrate the prejudice/abuse that we have to put up with. Perhaps this is an example of an academic 'extremist' that we can use to deflect the frequent claims re patient 'extremists'?

 

[Wildcat]

.
After the publication of 'Hystories' (and notably within the book itself) Elaine Showalter spitefully turned on the doctors who treat ME as a biomedical condition, who publicly support and defend the patients. Drs Paul Cheny and Daniel Peterson (the Lake Tahoe epidemic doctors) were especially singled out by Showalter for disparagement and contempt in her book 'Hystories'.



http://articles.baltimoresun.com/19...-showalter-hystories-chronic-fatigue-syndrome

'Rewriting Modern 'Hystories' Elaine Showalter believes that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Gulf War Syndrome and other current maladies are not significantly different from the Salem witch hysteria or the spurt in reports of alien abductions.'

May 28, 1997|By Richard O'Mara | Richard O'Mara,SUN STAFF

WASHINGTON - Elaine Showalter is pursued by tired people.


'....it became obvious to Showalter "that the kind of hysterical epidemics people talked about in the 19th or 18th centuries are happening now."

These epidemics are numerous. One of them is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Others are known familiarly as the Recovered Memory, Multiple Personality and Gulf War syndromes. She also includes among modern hysterics those who claim to have been abducted by aliens and people who say they have been exposed to Satanic rituals.

Modern hysteric epidemics have some similarities with those in history, and a few differences. In the past they were localized, and short-lived. Today they last a long time and spread across wider territories. Some become international: Multiple Personality Disorder, which started in North America, is now all over the world; Gulf War Syndrome, which originated here, is manifest in England.

Among the elements necessary to virtually all contemporary epidemics, in addition to the sufferers themselves, are sympathetic physicians. Showalter writes: "[Dr.] Paul Cheney specifies personal experience as the difference between the physician who 'believes' in CFS as an organic illness and those who see it as a psychological syndrome."

This desire to "believe" despite a lack of definitive evidence of a biological cause for the disease, says Showalter, reflects "an unwillingness to accept a psychological disorder as 'real.' "

There are many physicians of this ilk, Showalter insists.'......

.

 

[Dx Revision Watch]

I'm not involved in advocacy as a patient, but as carer of someone approaching their 16th year of illness, who has lost all their adolescence and 20s to this illness.

And to add: The patient for whom I am carergiver was diagnosed initially with a post viral condition; then at four months from onset, the diagnosis was firmed up to ME by an NHS paediatrician (who used the term ME as well as the term CFS). He was offered a PET scan, but it would have meant travelling some distance out of area, and he was too unwell to travel comfortably. He was supported by the hospital in obtaining LEA provided home tuition until he was 17 and to obtain special arrangements for sitting a small number of exams at home, with an invigilator.

This was early 1999. At that point, we knew nothing about ME, had no computers in the house, had never discussed the illness with another patient, had been exposed to no media articles or other sources of information.

Where does Shorter think this patient or his parents caught a "meme" from? Out of the air?

And what would his view be of the NHS paediatrician who diagnosed him? Colluding with the patient in a folie à deux?


If you want to view Shorter's other areas of academic interest, his papers are PubMed listed here

According to his blog, he's in the process of writing another book, is fascinated with Fifty Shades of Grey and BDSM and is spending time hanging out on "adult" forums.

They are welcome to him.

 

[Wildcat]

.
@Bob wrote: "Although this person has deeply offensive views, I'm of the opinion that he's a nobody. There are always going to be uninformed idiots spouting out offensive nonsense in relation to any subject."


Edward Shorter has been established in the academic/media machine of promoting psychosocial constructs of disease for decades,
http://www.psychiatry.utoronto.ca/people/dr-edward-shorter/


Showalter and Shorter were a double act. Showalter sought and gained world wide media publicity for her book 'Hystories', with national newspaper, radio and TV interviews (1997/8/9). She was all over the US and british media, just for starters.

Then Showalter turned the tables, played the victim, and gained a lot more publicity by claiming she'd recieved threats from patients, and, in the article I quoted above, from a doctor.

The media called Showalter "brave" to take on and challenge the so called hysterics.

By the way, the one and only doctor who Showalter actually interviewed for her book was Professor Wessely. Some who have actually read the book describe it as a vehicle for Prof Wessely's policies on ME and Gulf War Syndrome.
.

Thats why the Countess of Mar (member of the UK House of Lords) in her open letters to Prof Wessely, asked Wessely to clarify whether or not he knew Elaine Showalter before she wrote 'Hystories'

Prof Wessely replied that he only met Prof Showalter socially after she had published.

.

 

[msf]

Haha, "it became obvious to Showalter "that the kind of hysterical epidemics people talked about in the 19th or 18th centuries are happening now." Lucky we have geniuses like this helping us to discover the roots of disease.

 

[msf]

If I was a psychologist I would be embarrassed to be associated with these people.

 

[Dx Revision Watch]

Although this person has deeply offensive views, I'm of the opinion that he's a nobody?

I wouldn't describe him as a "nobody." If you want to view Shorter's other areas of academic interest, his papers and co-authored papers are PubMed listed here

He's co-authored amongst others with Bernard Carroll, David Healy, Robert Spitzer, Allen Frances, Max Fink.

 

[msf]

How is this in PubMed? Why not have literary criticism articles too if you're going to include this bullshit?

 

[msf]

From one of his articles: "The history of the DSM’s otherworldly, judgmental, and completely unscientific approach to sex would be risible if the consequences in the real world of making behavior into medical diagnoses were not so serious: for example, partners in divorce cases risk losing access to their children on the grounds that their sexual behavior qualifies them as “perverts”

Yep, no sense of irony or hypocrisy, what's the name for this condition in psychology? I can think of some possible names, but I doubt they would adopt them.

Oh, and he seems very interested in masturbation, although he seems to be a more expert in the verbal kind.

 

[Dx Revision Watch]

How is this in PubMed? Why not have literary criticism articles too if you're going to include this bullshit?

How is what in PubMed?

Psychology Today blog commentaries are not PubMed listed.

 

[msf]

I was replying to your post where you listed his articles in PubMed, my quote was from the first entry on the list.

 

[Dx Revision Watch]

I take your point, but I can't imagine he has much influence on the medical establishment? He's a nobody to me anyway.

Bob, I've PM'd you.

 

[Dx Revision Watch]

I was replying to your post where you listed his articles in PubMed, my quote was from the first entry on the list.

No quote is displaying for me in your post, hence my query.

 

[adreno]

From one of his articles: "The history of the DSM’s otherworldly, judgmental, and completely unscientific approach to sex would be risible if the consequences in the real world of making behavior into medical diagnoses were not so serious: for example, partners in divorce cases risk losing access to their children on the grounds that their sexual behavior qualifies them as “perverts”

Actually here it seems he is arguing against the pathologization of sexual behaviors - which I tend to agree with.

 

[msf]

I agree with the sentiment too, I just found it depressing that he is making a name for himself in psychology by pointing out the very obvious mistakes of the past without any awareness that he and other psychologist's are making similar mistakes today.

 

[msf]

Come on, a psychologist criticizing psychiatry for having a completely unscientific approach?