BABCP Spring Workshops and Conference KCL 16th to 17th April, 2020

https://www.babcp.com/Conferences/Spring.aspx

16th April
Workshop Two
Persistent (Medically Unexplained) Physical Symptoms: A Scientist Practitioner Approach
Trudie Chalder, King’s College London and David McCormack, Queen’s University Belfast

https://www.babcp.com/Conferences/Spring/Programme/Workshops.aspx#WS2

 

From first link above

The whole program looks horrific to be honest. @dave30th might be interested in seeing this.

 

I'd like to hear from some people who have been 'thriving' after having been subjected to TC's well-established (over decades) CBT. So many people have been affected by poorly defined and treated chronic illnesses. The purveyors of CBT (still) seem to think their CBT model is a viable tool to help people manage and even 'thrive'. So where are all these people after 30 years?

And how are 'new CBT models' substantially different? I suspect that to mean the delivery of the model not the underlying concept itself. And I think it's fair to wonder how tinkering with the delivery system improves performance.

 

see
Frequent attenders with medically unexplained symptoms: Service use and costs in secondary care
https://www.researchgate.net/public...ptoms_Service_use_and_costs_in_secondary_care

https://sci-hub.tw/10.1192/bjp.180.3.248

hardly up-to-date info

eta: SW also an author

eta2: see also this thread
https://www.s4me.info/threads/is-it-true-that-more-than-half-of-medical-consultations-are-for-mus-a-look-at-the-evidence.8547

 

Uhuh. Nods.

Well, they certainly removed the uncertainty from my life. Thanks to their successful stifling of research and stigmatizing of patients over the last 30 years it's looking fairly certain I will be far to old to go back to work by the time there's an effective treatment.

So , yeah, thanks. [Sarcasm]

 

That's nice but lots of people actually like uncertainty and find predictability boring. One of the very core features of humanity is being able to deal with uncertainty. Literally, this is one of our biggest strengths, to adapt and deal with uncertain things. I freaking love uncertainty, for one, this is where the unsolved problems are.

False attribution error syndrome is a growing problem in medicine. Its symptoms include making stuff up and talking nonsense about stuff the sufferer doesn't understand and refuses to learn, preferring instead magical explanations that are easily falsifiable.

This is all pseudoscience garbage. Quit making stuff up, dammit. This conference is as likely to help addressing the underlying problem as would a conference titled "Let's burn all the coal and make money yeeehaaa!!" is likely to solve climate change. Literally this right here IS the problem.

 

Sorry, I thought I was done, but I'm back ....

Trudge Chalder - that cheeky mare!

Uncertainty.....if she thinks developing any of these conditions is a result of "uncertainty" she clearly has no concept of what it's like to suffer from any of them.

Before becoming sick many hold down well paying jobs and contribute to pension schemes. They can afford to buy insurance policies that will protect them if they have to cancel a holiday, become unable to pay the mortgage through ill health or unemployment etc. (assuming the so and so 'a pay out, but pre illness you're naive enough to believe they will).

Then on becomu ill with a condition which has been arbitrarily rebadged as a MUS. I say arbitrarily because, let's face it, there's no science involved; just opinion and prejudice. Suddenly, they discover their insurer won't pay out, the NHS they contributed to is bog all use, their employer sees the diagnosis and assumes the worst about them. Then there's the benefits system primed against them.

Suddenly, uncertainty everywhere. Whereas before you could face uncertainty with equanimity - you had financial resources, health and faith in your own abilities. Now, you're treated as, at best, a weakling burden on the state, at worst, a lying cheat.

Maybe, if you're lucky, you'll get your measly benefit payout this time (probably less than you previously paid in tax for a month), but you won't necessarily get it next time and they can review you anytime they like.

This woman is clueless.....

 

That is interesting, Cheshire and highlights another problem with their theories" I did not interpret the phrase the way you have. Like you I hate false certitudes. Over and over, in all aspects of science, I have seen things that were said to be definitely true turn out to be wrong.

I took it to mean needing everything to be well planned. The sicker I have become the more I need to plan ahead as I have no resources to deal with the unexpected.

I wonder if they ask what people were like before they were ill or if they just ask what they are like now and make assumptions?

 

The most amazing part of this is that it is easily falsifiable and we already have the data for it. There are many traits that are known to be strongly correlated with dislike for uncertainty, mostly in the form of political or social conservatism and religiousness.

If it were true at all that unease with uncertainty, or however they frame this nonsense, it would be strongly correlated with those factors. It isn't. Case closed. Easy falsification in a single business day, by using population studies, or by directly asking those questions along with the psychometric questionnaires dance.

That's the most disappointing part. The arguments don't even stand any scrutiny at all and yet are parroted as if they were indisputable facts. This is basically medicine by aphorism, even worse that those making those bland meaningless assertions know they are false but since almost nobody in medicine cares about the consequences to us this is somehow acceptable. I don't get it, it's so mediocre.

 

from other recent outpourings, I strongly suspect that this is all moving towards promoting ACT as the 'therapy du jour', and possibly also the group therapy which seems to be on the rise, and then of course the jewel in the crown (and probably the most lucrative) ......online CBT.

I don't know about 'old wine in new bottles'; I think it's been pretty well corked.

 

Good point about the rise of ACT that seems to coincide with their weakening language around 'recovery' with the exception of Per Fink et al in Denmark (his viking designation would be Per Fink The Die Hard perhaps).

 

I don't know about 'old wine in new bottles'; I think it's been pretty well corked.


To me it has definitely turned to vinegar.

 

another silver lining

"Spring Workshops & Conference cancelled
As a result of the ongoing COVID-19 situation, the venue for our Spring Workshops and Conference is unable to host our event.

We have had to make the decision to cancel this year's Spring Workshops & Conference, with the exception of Mark Freeston’s popular workshop 'Living with Intolerance of Uncertainty and How to Make Friends with Uncertainty' which we still hope to run as a webcast."

https://www.babcp.com/Conferences/Spring.aspx

 

Yes, some good news.

Have only just noticed the second half of this title.

"Workshop Two
Persistent (Medically Unexplained) Physical Symptoms: A Scientist Practitioner Approach
Trudie Chalder, King’s College London and David McCormack, Queen’s University Belfast"

Does she REALLY believe that she is a scientist? I know she originally trained as a nurse, but....

 

Apparently it's a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientist–practitioner_model.

Basically a way to justify how clinical psychology can claim to do science without... uh... doing science and, especially, avoiding the scientific method, with all its pesky objective things and measuring of various things. Really bad idea in hindsight but then it clearly was at the time so whatever.

Somehow this is the image that pops in my mind:

 

It's all about the belief.....