‘We need Psychologists… but please don’t psychologise Long Covid’

[rvallee]

‘We need Psychologists… but please don’t psychologise Long Covid’
https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/we-need-psychologists-please-dont-psychologise-long-covid

Interview with Dr David Joffe, a physician working with LC organizations, who seems like a good ally. I think it goes a bit far in saying that we 'need' psychologists, rather that psychologists need to know this stuff.

Personally I see zero need for any of this, for myself, but I can see how some people might benefit from it. However this is all pretty much about mitigating the impact of denial, discrimination and psychologization, so it's more like turning on the A/C to compensate for the heater being on while it's hot outside, instead of just turning it off. Just turn the damn heater off, FFS.

Lots of discussion of ME/CFS so it's more of a joint LC/ME/CFS news but with the title it belongs more in the LC section. It discusses rather well the historical record of psychologizing ME/CFS and how damaging it has been.

Published by the British Psychological Society but does not necessarily represent their views.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

I think it goes a bit far in saying that we 'need' psychologists, rather that psychologists need to know this stuff.

You are being very polite @rvallee. Are there some new forum rules ?
This seems to be a muddle of opinionation and self-congratulation by some psychologophiles.
The physician is pulling all sorts of rare stuff out of a top hat to impress the therapists, who are loving the love-in atmosphere.

As far as I am aware there is no evidence anywhere here.

Yesterday upon the stair
I met some evidence that wasn't there
It wasn't there again today
I wish that evidence would ... actually get tested.

 

[Sean]

What we need above all else from psychs is to get off our backs.

 

[hibiscuswahine]

Being one of the few psycholophiles in the forum, that is a bit of a mouthful that word!

Most of what I read was reasonable considering the nature of the article. There will be a some people with LC that have developed mental health problems from having such a disabling illness, who may want to have one of the psychological therapies discussed. There was a lot of extraneous information on things that psychology cannot fix (like structural brain damage and other stuff).

I wouldn't want people to read this and think all people with LC have phobias, PTSD, impulse control problems and need help socialising because that is incorrect.

I do wonder if all psychologists really have learnt not to psychologise ME (and now LC). I don't know, they do seem to be really considering the misuse of CBT and psychologisation of ME.

I wouldn't have thought a psychotherapist (which is a different from psychologist but the term can be used loosely to mean any therapist) would be my first port of call if I had a phobia or PTSD.

 

[rvallee]

What we need above all else from psychs is to get off our backs.

From how the last few decades went, psychologists aren't that big of a problem. In this case, they're like the mechanics to the theoretical MDs who engineer what the psychologists work on. They follow the manuals written for them, work within lines defined by psychosomatic ideologues. Aside maybe from the odd "I have a PhD in CBT", which absolutely blows my mind. But Chalder would be nothing without Wessely, so whatever.

It's the psychiatrists, neurologists and generalists who have to get their act together. The DSM needs a major, thorough clean-up as well, if any of this is to get better. The psychologization of chronic illness was not the product of psychologists, they only played a support role in it.

This is all on medicine. The rest will follow. Governments will follow. Health care systems will follow. Society will follow. There is no other place to lay the blame on here. No one else is responsible than people either writing, approving or disseminating the awful pseudoscience behind this cruel systemic dysfunction.

 

[bobbler]

From how the last few decades went, psychologists aren't that big of a problem. In this case, they're like the mechanics to the theoretical MDs who engineer what the psychologists work on. They follow the manuals written for them, work within lines defined by psychosomatic ideologues. Aside maybe from the odd "I have a PhD in CBT", which absolutely blows my mind. But Chalder would be nothing without Wessely, so whatever.

It's the psychiatrists, neurologists and generalists who have to get their act together. The DSM needs a major, thorough clean-up as well, if any of this is to get better. The psychologization of chronic illness was not the product of psychologists, they only played a support role in it.

This is all on medicine. The rest will follow. Governments will follow. Health care systems will follow. Society will follow. There is no other place to lay the blame on here. No one else is responsible than people either writing, approving or disseminating the awful pseudoscience behind this cruel systemic dysfunction.

Important to note that even within psychology it’s clinical psychology … maybe health psychology - both of which are where medicine overlaps to create some quite different habits and norms.

yet there potentially are some/many other arms that hopefully have managed to maintain a more scientific or methodical design approach to things - and by this and often their special lists in particular could be very helpful to us

medicine for example seems to have just lumped everything under blah ‘brain fog , probably anxiety’ instead of looking at how we get exhausted when you load us up with multitasks or using eye tracking as a measure

it’s the nonsense of the eefrt being used like wallit did - and plonk some meaning in after that was the lowest common possible denominator instead of thinking what those types of test could usefully reveal by doing them properly and seeing whether different conditions matter, or if calibrated to show we might be like normal persons etc.

Heck it would be nice for once to have someone looking at those of us who’ve had this a long time and our prioritisation skills or efficiency in certain things - just anything that isn’t hounding after denigrating us (we know it’s bs they want to help us - it means ‘re-educate’ because we don’t think you’re our kind of normal under a pretence it will make us ‘better) - but might show the areas we’ve thru bitter brutality learned a lot of stuff we should have respect for and skills and wisdom we could indeed pass onto ‘the busy normal people’ because we aren’t trampling on their gravy train turf.

I mean that’s the biggie Maslow one isn’t it - being allowed our dignity back as well as our identity not being plopped on by some misogynist made-up fake personality labels plopper and I’d appreciate if a scientific psychologist could step in and note the bs correlations they make up and seek out to slander us are obviously unkind and harmful. So that those further down the chain - the two day course in it physio or OT who had it embedded or teacher whose been told if someone has a bad life it must be depression or layperson who instead of hearing you say your physical limits talks nonsense about trying ‘trauma therapy’ gets told how draining , continual and harmful it is. And to learn to act straightforward and with integrity again and train out of manoeuvring people so they can be honest that way again.

 

[Sean]

This is all on medicine.

Which is the problem.