"Treatment of neurotic disorders" by Simon Wessely (2008 presentation)

[Esther12]

All looks pretty typical Wessely. I think I've seen him re-use some of those slide on other occasions.

 

[chipmunk1]

That was one of the scenarios in that hilarious series of videos from the psychobabblers some years ago. "I'm going to school, I work all night as a bartender, and I drink a lot. I'm so worn out." "You must have ME/CFS!"

We drink too much.
We drink too little.
We do too much.
We do too little.
We think too much.
We think too little.
We emote too much.
We emote too little.
We have unrealistically high expectations of our energy levels.
We have unrealistically low expectations of our energy levels.
We are perfectionists.
We are lazy.
We are high-achievers.
We are deconditioned.
We push us too hard.
We are afraid of exercise.
We exercised too much in our childhood.
We exercised too little in our childhood.
Benefits make us worse.
We have too little support.
We get too much support
We have the wrong support.
We are not ill we just want to get attention from a healthcare provider.
We don't want see a therapist.
We don't want to get better.
We want to get better but believe we can't.
We catastrophize.
We are alexthymic.
We are too altruistic.
We focus too much on ourselves.
We are getting too much sleep.
We are not getting enough sleep.
We hypomentalize.
We hypermentalize.

We lack insight in our condition but the "researchers" don't.
It is important that we develop a consistent approach:

http://bit.do/TnhP

Does anyone still believe this BS?

 

[A.B.]

Does anyone still believe this BS?

It's just psychobabble. Its purpose is creating the illusion of competence so that the therapist can sell its quack cure to patients with poorly understood health problems.

And blaming patients is also not a coincidence. Quacks want patients to question themselves, not the therapy or therapist.

 

[chipmunk1]

It's just psychobabble. Its purpose is creating the illusion of competence so that the therapist can sell its quack cure to patients with poorly understood health problems.

And blaming patients is also not a coincidence. Quacks want patients to question themselves, not the therapy or therapist.

They should distill all their research findings in one simple sentence:

We don't know what you have but we know for sure that it's your fault.

 

[Cheshire]

Like your list!! Anyway, we do wrong, because if we did right, we would'nt be sick!!


I'm more and more perplexed by these ones:

We do too much.
We do too little.

In their perspective (we don't have any disease) how do they justify that we do too much, when what we've achieved is just so tiny?

And how doing too much, (and too much for PWME is just laughable compared to healthy people) can be considered as a clear sign of psychiatric issue?? It's really pathologising a normal behavior.


Today, I felt better, I walked 2X10 minutes in the afternoon. And tonight, I still felt great, I was feeling very happy, because it’s been a long time since I felt like that. So I enthusiastically cooked a simple meal but without pausing. Maybe it’s a mistake and I’ll pay for it tomorrow.


But Why on earth should doing a bit too much when you’re so happy to feel a bit better (I don’t dare say normal) should be considered as a psychiatric sign of inconsistent behavior???


These people are really insane, they see insanity everywhere…

 

[misskatniss]

I recall that B**ch of a psych ward nurse again who stared at me as if I were from Mars, when I, in tears after having had a severe crash after a 2minutes shower (sitting!!), told her that the cause for my poor condition was that I had done too much. For my body, that at that moment was very obviously too much, but because she can do a 30min shower without noticing it, she just lifted her eyebrows and said: "Too much?? I don´t think so! It´s not normal for a woman your age. And if you don´t shower regularly (which is daily), we will have you done it by force, prescribing it, you will be taken to the bath upstairs daily and washed by me with other people around who fix you." So guess what. I invented the trick to quickly wash my hair in days I knew that it was her shift and tell her that I had had a shower (she always asked). Still very exhausting but better than what she had menaced to make happen. And I shall trust in a system or a discipline in which I can be treated like that???

There was never any moment of pity or compassion for me being in that condition. Only attributions of guilt. It was all my fault. My "soul did it". I "had to work harder on myself". I must be severely masochistic without even being aware, huh? No, neither. Otherwise I would have enjoyed the forced bathes instead of avoiding them.

After some time I could shower for two minutes without almost passing out after. But she and other people there (not all, but way too many) continued pressurizing me on that and other stuff. I´m traumatized. And they were always right because staff and doctors, and I was always wrong because psychotic in their eyes. Unfortunately my "belief" that I am almost completely bedbound continues. Only for all the huge benefits and attention (haha) I gain from it. Always dreamt of losing my job, my home, my friends, my credibilty, my independence, my painlessness, my hope and all the other stuff. Completely overrated. Who cares for living a normal life going out there with ice cream? Oh, my bed in darkness and pain is so much cosier.

Okay. And now I am close to vomiting. Still so shaken by the experiences of de-humanization and incapacitation. I was the weakest part, and they used it against me, labeling it as "help". And my not getting better was refusal and my failure. I tried three times to just get it over with in the ward, and they haven´t even noticed otherwise they would have kept me forever. I was too desperate. Thinking of Karina H is giving me chills because I have a vague idea what she is going through.

What I don´t get about Wessely: What would be so bad in admitting that we might be ill and simply the reason still not found? The body is so complex. That would not steal the competence nor hurt nor nothing to just put it like this. Why that reflex to mark everything that doesn´t resolve spontaneously or quickly after their intervention as psych? Why not ally with the sufferers? And: If CFS is so difficult to diagnose - and it is - how could he manage to sort them out for his studies? Who says his tested persons all really had it, especially those who benefitted from GET? A good scientist would have hesitated for a while, said to himself, something doesn´t turn out right here and adjusted his hypothesis instead of concluding the crap he concluded. Which harms us so much. And how on earth can he presume that we manage to mainstream our symptoms worldwide? If we are imaginarily sick, why do we hallucinate all the same bunch of symptoms? Oh dear, why haven´t his peers asked him one of those questions? The quantity of his studies doesn´t make quality!

I am so glad that people like Ian Lipkin exist, and the slow increase of crowdfunded money almost makes me cry :-(

 

[A.B.]

These people are really insane, they see insanity everywhere…

It takes very little for psychiatrists to see insanity in a normal person. A simple suggestion is enough. Presumably reading that ME/CFS is a mental disorder would be enough for them to see insanity in all ME/CFS patients.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment

Please do check the "related experiments" section which is even more telling.

 

[JalapenoLuv]

Just because some hypothesis were disproven doesn't mean that a condition is mental. It's not like he had evidence showing that the majority of people getting CBT and GET were being cured. But this is from 2008. Hopefully its getting better with the research showing non-mental findings.

 

[worldbackwards]

There's always been research showing non-mental findings. It's just that the psychs colonised this years ago and got themselves believed. We now officially fall into the 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' bracket ie if you prove us wrong, we'll move the goalposts. I see little sign of that changing.

 

[chipmunk1]

It was all my fault.
My "soul did it".
I "had to work harder on myself".
I must be severely masochistic without even being aware, huh?

as i said above:

We don't know what you have but we know for sure that it's your fault.

That seems to be their mantra and they need it to maintain the illusion that they are experts.

While medicine discovered insulin, penicillin, developed pacemakers and other wonderful things Psychobabble has not been able to create anything that resembles are cure or anything that is really useful.

Psychobabble hundred years ago and today? Not much difference always the same old crap.

Will we see ever a breakthrough discovery like we have seen in many or most other medical specialties?

More than hundred years of "research" have not been able to create one. Will we ever see one? Doubt it.

Unlike Psychobabble Psychiatry has at least developed a few medications that can lessen symptoms of real mental illnesses in some cases but it has still to make a lot of progress,. I think the only two Nobel Prizes in Medicine that went to Psychiatry go back 50-100 years and were for "Malarial Therapy" which means infecting people with malaria in order to treat their neurosyphilis and the other was for Lobotomy which was not much more than smashing an ice pick into the head of a poor innocent victim. Not much to be proud of.

 

[Sean]

We do too much.
We do too little.

The Goldilocks explanation, and, of course, it requires an 'expert' to tell us where the 'just right' zone is.

 

[ukxmrv]

Here it is - for your enjoyment the "treating CFS" video with the chap who is tired and drinks and sleeps in after working at the pub!

Starring Mrs Wessely herself as a doctor who knows F all about ME and CFS

Favourite quote "you have an alarm clock do you?"

Starts at approx 1:30 in the video

 

[A.B.]

Here it is - for your enjoyment the "treating CFS" video with the chap who is tired and drinks and sleeps in after working at the pub!

Starring Mrs Wessely herself as a doctor who knows F all about ME and CFS

Favourite quote "you have an alarm clock do you?"

Starts at approx 1:30 in the video

They say we need to keep a diary to recognize how we are making ourselves sick with inappropriate behaviour and thoughts. When I kept track of my symptoms, I discovered that relapses can occur for no reason at all. Of course I can also make myself worse for a while by doing too much - such as going to the dentist, buying groceries and then cooking a proper meal on the same day (so much for bursts of activity ).

I continue to be surprised how irrational the whole BPS model is.

And of course, patients are portrayed like naive children that need a parent figure to tell them how to behave normally and organize their lives.

 

[chipmunk1]

we re-organised his sleep

Must have been a highly complicated task requiring several specialists.

Must add this to the list:

We are getting too much sleep.
We are not getting enough sleep.

Love this one from the video:

It is important that we develop a consistent approach.

How is Psychobabble a consistent approach?

The only consistent thing is that the patient is doing something wrong and must change his thoughts or behaviours.

We do too much.
We do too little.
The Goldilocks explanation, and, of course, it requires an 'expert' to tell us where the 'just right' zone is.

I am still waiting for: Our activity levels are too normal. Oh wait we already have: Our activity levels are normal but we falsely believe we can't get enough done because of our fatigue.

 

[JalapenoLuv]

Does anyone know what year this video was taken? The MD is nice but completely out of touch with CFS.

 

[Snowdrop]

"And of course, patients are portrayed like naive children that need a parent figure to tell them how to behave normally and organize their lives." (post #33)

I think of this as the central motivator for the type of people who are capable of doing this to vulnerable groups.
Money's nice. Fame good. Respect, rather important. But, ah, to be the person in the position of supreme authority. To be able to tell all and sundry in a group that cannot fight back that you and only you know what's best and right.

Philosophically, the BPS school of thinking and operating fits nicely with Fascism. I don't mean this as an inflammatory comment.
It is what it is. It seems to me to fit.

 

[Cheshire]

Must have been a highly complicated task requiring several specialists.

Must add this to the list:

We are getting too much sleep.
We are not getting enough sleep.
.

One could also add:


- we are unable to "mentalize" i.e. we don’t have “the metacognitive capacity to reflect on [our] self and on others”. (a state close to alexithymia)

- we “hypermentalise” “several features distinguish such accounts from genuinely high levels of mentalization, including the excessively lengthy, overly analytical and repetitive nature of such narratives; the overly cognitive nature of such accounts, out of touch of the underlying affective core of these experiences”


All this “mentalization” theory is a classic principle of psychoanalytic psychosomatic. The quotes are coming from an article by Van Houdenhove, Common and specific factors in the psychotherapeutic treatment of patients suffering from chronic fatigue and pain, dating back from 2013. (sorry, can’t put a link, the article seems to be no more free access…)

In this article, he acknowledges that the Belgian CFS centers had not so great results, so his solution to help us better is… to add a bit of psychoanalysis theory to CBT to make it more effective. The whole article is just so much of a caricature that I don’t know if it’s better to burst in tears or in laughter…

 

[misskatniss]

don´t burst in anything that resembles extreme acitity @Cheshire ^^ you might not be able to go to the pub afterwards!

PS: that hypermentalization crap was talked to me too by the psychiatrist who claimed that my repetitive stating how poorly I felt and what was happening was pathological. I were too occupied with my body, she said. Yes, indeed the guys on the sinking Titanic were pathologically fixed with the idea to find a rescue boat. Indeed. They should have done CBT instead and wouldn´t have drunk, don´t they?

 

[Cheshire]

don´t burst in anything that resembles extreme acitity @Cheshire ^^ you might not be able to go to the pub afterwards!

 

[chipmunk1]

One could also add:

- we are unable to "mentalize" i.e. we don’t have “the metacognitive capacity to reflect on [our] self and on others”. (a state close to alexithymia)

- we “hypermentalise” “several features distinguish such accounts from genuinely high levels of mentalization, including the excessively lengthy, overly analytical and repetitive nature of such narratives; the overly cognitive nature of such accounts, out of touch of the underlying affective core of these experiences”

I have added this.

PS: that hypermentalization crap was talked to me too by the psychiatrist who claimed that my repetitive stating how poorly I felt and what was happening was pathological. I were too occupied with my body,

But the other Psychobabbler said we need to listen more to our body? Do i need to listen or do i need to ignore?

we don’t have “the metacognitive capacity to reflect on [our] self and on others”. (a state close to alexithymia)

So we must have circumcision trauma?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia

In 2011, the International Journal of Men's Health published a study which found that circumcised men were approximately 60% more likely to score highly on a standardized alexithymia test. The authors hypothesized that the trauma of the procedure may contribute to personality disorders later in life. The abstract reads:

All this psychobabble is making me pretty confused. More, less, More? Pathological bursts of activity combined with exercise phobia and alcohol avoidance? How do i treat that? Increasing activity while decreasing it? Paying more attention to my body while learning to ignore my physical symptoms? Can that work? I can't believe that. That must be why i am sick. I don't believe that i can get well. wait why did i get sick in the first place? Did i get exposed to psychobabble and then developed the illness or did i get the illness and got exposed to psychobabble? Wait i didn't get any illness, i just believe that i am sick? Why did i believe that i am sick? I think a psychobabbler told me. No wait he told me i am not ill. Why did i go then?

I .. I ...I...??? i think i need to visit a psychobabbler to help me sort this all out.