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Do we know who is involved?

3.) The immune system - Peter Parham Peter was in my class at school. He was always a rather down to earth sensible fellow. I can imagine he would have made a good job of a textbook. He did some pioneering work on HLA in the 1980s.

I think it must be gamma. I can feel it creeping up over my chondroitin 6 sulphate even now.

I suspect Joan Crawford is the person we need. She has been a bit busy I think. Hopefully the BPS information will soon be available.

I had not commented, but thought much the same. I cannot honestly work out how they think hypermobility mediates neurodivergence causing pain and fatigue - unless neruodivergent people have a habit of stretching their fingers and backbones.

It is probably not that different here in the UK but people known just as 'therapists' are by and large those who use bogus psychodynamic theory.

Yes, I don't know if Joan has produced anything as yet but I realise that she has been working with the British Psychological Society to produce some material and it sounds as if it could be remarkably good. I didn't think we had sight of it yet though.

A lifetime of interaction with psychiatrist and psychotherapists and, since getting interested in ME/CFS, a reading of the literature on psychotherapeutic approaches to ME/CFS. It all looks to me frighteningly ungrounded in any cogent theory or practical evidence. And of course there is nothing...

You may be right. Our health professionals fact sheet might help. But maybe you want someone who is already up to speed on such things in terms of psychological implications. I would think more in terms of a counselling psychologist than a psychotherapist.

But then that is a knock on effect of the ME/CFS, and I would expect someone capable of providing support to find it obvious that 'standard psychotherapeutic approaches' are garbage and that ME/CFS is an illness that is often not believed.

Quite, but it is a bit more complicated. It is a mixture of what i would call phoney science - based on psychodynamic theories and sensible practical support, which isn't science but quite likely keeps people alive.

Doctors need to be aware of the medical framework. I am not sure that psychotherapists do. In this context they just need to be aware that poeple with ME/CFS are likely to have problems because others around them do not believe they are ill. That is a social problem I would expect a...

I don't quite see the two as parallel. You need doctors to make a diagnosis. I am not convinced that you need psychotherapists for ME/CFS - I am still a bit unclear as to whether we are talking about needs relating to ME/CFS or to something else?

But why do we need a psychothreapist rather than someone with a bit of understanding of life and social interaction? Psychological theory has nothing to offer here as far as I know. It may be that some psychologists develop skills to effectively support people in the situation where there is...

But psychotherapists are supposed to be well-informed and perspicacious about people's 'psychological needs'.

I was quite pleased with that. I managed to say what I would have wanted to say. Thanks to David's choreography.

I hadn't seen that article. It seems to be about psychotherapy directed at ME/CFS. It starts off fairly sensibly but I am sceptical about the way it then seems to slip into the usual justification of a role for a specific therapist when all we know is that people with ME/CFS seem to do best if...

Yes, but surely a psychotherapist with a braod enough outlook to be able to make any sensible assessment of someone's needs would be aware of ME/CFS as a disease that poses problems because others do not believe in it. I would have thought anyone who socialises a bit would be aware of that.

But that was rather my point. If someone has not done the due diligence to familiarise themselves with problems like ME/CFS what reason is there to think they know anything of psychotherapeutic use? At least in the UK, anyone can call themself a psychotherapist, and they do.

If a psychotherapist did not already have a good grasp of this I would wonder what use they could be as a therapist?