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Interesting, @Ryan31337. May I ask what your diagnosis is - the one for which the biologics are prescribed? (fine not to say if you prefer not to)

Its some sort of magazine-style "expert commentary", rather than an academic article (although I don't think that really excuses it). It seems to me we all have a need to believe there is some magic out there that might fill the gaps in mainstream medicine. While its no longer considered...

Just in case you thought we were the only ones having to put up with this crap: The middle bit sounds promising to me. The rest is the usual BS. Although it doesn't explicitly mention negative illness beliefs, I think that's implicit in the suggestion of CBT. I love how they think the fatigue...

Sort of, it still involves the frontal lobes, but the tissue removed is different. The cingulum is a bundle of fibres that communicates between the anterior cingulate (involved in motivated, goal-directed action), and regions of the brain involved in memory and emotion. Cingulumotomy effectively...

Yea. It also helped that the authors of the paper were also the surgeons. I love how the guy was expected to have a total personality meltdown if he became separated from his pain - but miraculously, no meltdown happened! His "compensated personality" worked just fine!

Just came across this and had to share this with you all. Very old, but still, my eyes popped at the patient descriptions. Not to mention the "treatment". Sort of in the category of "things could be worse".... Its a description of the outcomes of several patients with "psychogenic pain" or...

I'm guessing they're looking for subclinical differences, which seems to have become quite a thing of late. Lots of studies suggesting those with major depressive disorder have higher CRP levels, on average, than controls without depression - even though generally below the threshold for...

Yes, this is much better. Treat yourself with the same consideration and respect as you would someone you care for. If you want to achieve something, do yourself the courtesy of encouraging, not undermining your own efforts - just as you would for someone you care about.

Hate it for a totally different reason - more crap about "narcissism", a currently fashionable construct that does not, in my opinion, hold together at all. We're all supposed to have high self-esteem - because that's a Good Thing, and because apparently, low self-esteem is the root of all evil...

So, the conclusion I drew from this is: If a researcher uses a qualitative method, they can write a whole paper on themes that align with their own hopes and beliefs, without ever mentioning any of those that might run counter to them. Reading the paper, you would go away thinking that there...

Note the way they use word order here to convey their implicit assumption about direction of causation. That is, that lower physical activity leads to greater fatigue. Its like saying that "those who visit the doctor more frequently have a greater risk of death". You would never put it that...

@Guido den Broeder Perhaps the main problem with these types of arguments - that ME is a distinct entity from CFS - is the conflation between nomenclature and proposed aetiology. I think you need to keep these things separate. So, if you wish to make the argument that, in a subset of...

Perhaps you aren't aware, but the diagnostic label "chronic fatigue syndrome" is widely used in clinical practice in many countries, including the US, the UK and Australia. Its not merely a research term. Its on my health record and I have never participated in any research or even been asked to.

So, prescribing an activity programme which incorporates a gradually increasing component causes people to increase their activity. That's a demonstration of compliance, not an outcome. There was no accompanying reduction in self-reported fatigue. Even as a demonstration of compliance the...

Speaking of secondary gain, did anyone else read "The Comforts of Madness" when it came out in the late 80s? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Comforts_of_Madness_(novel) Quite the thing at the time, the 1988 Whitbread book of the year (UK). It was written by a psychiatric nurse, and is based...

Goes back way further I think. As far as Freud.

Although the SMC NZ was established independently of the SMC UK, they are connected, in that both are part of an international alliance of SMC's, which includes some other countries too (South Africa comes to mind, but I can't remember which else).

As @Jonathan Edwards said, these things can be gamed. For example, by recommending that authors add citations to previous work in the journal, or by publishing regular overview articles and editorial commentaries that cite articles from the journals - it doesn't take many of these to get to 3.3...

I couldn't agree more. In the 80s and 90s, bad psychology (and psychiatry) tore a lot of familiies apart, as many people got fed the line that the root of their problems must lie in their childhood. Patients were encouraged to think about all the ways their parents might have undermined them...

My understanding of the US system is that all Universities, including the private ones, have to maintain the legal status of being a not-for-profit organisation, but of course there are still advantages to drawing in as much money as possible. They use the profits to expand, or they plough it...