Article on ME/CFS in an Italian newspaper

Recently there have been several such articles in Germany. I'm happy that this topic is now getting more attention in various countries. An excerpt

Link to a Google translation of the article

 

That's nice to see. Articles like these are so important. I lived a few years in Italy and nobody I mentioned it to had ever heard about it.

Here's a link to the original article if anyone wants to give it a bit of traffic:
https://www.corriere.it/cronache/19...ro-c9c97492-2950-11ea-a8f0-127c1f8f40cd.shtml

 

Important for the record.

What I particularly like about articles like this is it shows how universal failure is, no matter what policies countries have adopted. The level of failure, basically 11/10 in actually managing to make things worse than they were before institutions paid attention, is the exact same wherever you look, the same consequences are featured everywhere of a complete breakdown in health care but additionally the impact denial has on removing personal support as well.

We hear the exact same things independently, lately in articles from Canada, the US, the UK, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium, Spain, now Italy. Everywhere the exact same failure, and this is the point: completely unrelated to the actual policies adopted, those actually make no difference. So the UK and Australia, which adopted the behavioral model in standard practice (to a point anyway), have the exact same outcomes as countries that simply did nothing, like Canada and Germany. With no significant variations between what was actually implemented.

Everywhere the same things reported, independently and consistently. So adopting the behavioral model objectively yields absolutely nothing. This is a plain fact. So when something has absolutely no impact on outcomes, even after 2 whole decades in practice in some places, it is simply unacceptable to pursue it, to pretend that it is of any value whatsoever.

The picture is clear, but no one who can make a difference wants to look at it, as it is fragmented and it's much easier to pretend otherwise, to continue the escalation of commitment onto something that has been accurately predicted would end in failure. What was it, two years ago that the PM of Norway apologized, and things are still heading in the exact same wrong direction, nothing changed at all. At this point, it almost seems out of spite, that continuing ahead is more about angrily lashing out at the obvious predictions of failure, taking it out on those who not only predicted but also actually are on the receiving end of the worst consequences. When the outcome is the same anyway, there's not much of a difference.

In short, this is completely immoral. I don't understand how it's not blatantly clear, whatever one's personal beliefs, the status quo is morally bankrupt. Harm is being done, willfully and informed of the consequences, but ideological dogma and sunk cost prevent people from acknowledging basic facts, preferring the same tired old fiction that failed in the past, is failing in the present and will likely continue to fail in the future, until it is stopped once and for all as nothing but demented speculative fiction.

 

I think there may be a difference. Countries like Germany never acknowledged the problem while countries like the UK did, to some degree, but psychologized it heavily. It may not be a coincidence that the UK has relatively organized patient organizations. If patients go mostly undiagnosed they cannot band together and form patient organizations.

What the UK did may have fueled the growth of opposition in the form of patient organizations.

 

Today there was also a short clip with this patient on TV.

http://www.rai.it/dl/RaiTV/programmi/media/ContentItem-7e7d30ac-806b-4e38-9eae-c7f4c66e7ccd-tg1.html

 

Oh sure there are distinctions but outcomes are the same everywhere: shambolic failure. I just meant that various approaches had the exact same outcome, which shows the bankruptcy of the BPS model that was actually tried in some places, leading to the same failure we see in countries that did not bother.

It just shows that the BPS model makes no difference in outcomes, it's entirely superfluous no matter which way it is tried, with more psychotherapy here and FND there or a mix of fatigue spectrum elsewhere.

 

In this blog post there is a link to the video with English subtitles.