BPS attempts at psychologizing Long Covid

Program will run clinical trial aimed at helping COVID-19 long haulers
(Ashok Gupta's NLP "Gupta Program")

This is a story from a local news station on the Fox network in Sacramento, California. Mentions a retired professor at Cal-Davis they'd interviewed as she was struggling with Long Covid, but no apparent connection to Gupta. No mention of any details about this 'clinical trial.' Nothing on the Gupta website about this, either, which is strange.

Of course, not so strange that he'd be angling for Long Covid customers. He struck me as a classier version of Phil Parker, if that makes any sense. Charming fellow. If you don't care that he's...comparable to Phil Parker.

https://fox40.com/news/local-news/p...trial-aimed-at-helping-covid-19-long-haulers/
 
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Ha ha, yes, I think the comparison of Gupta's treatment with LP is accurate, right down to standing on circles gesturing and saying stop to negative thoughts. I got talked into spending £99 on his DVD course years ago. I agree he uses his charm to talk clients into going along with his nonsense. Of course it didn't make any difference to my ME.
Sorry to see he's cashing in on long Covid too.
 
Trish said:
Ha ha, yes, I think the comparison of Gupta's treatment with LP is accurate, right down to standing on circles gesturing and saying stop to negative thoughts. I got talked into spending £99 on his DVD course years ago. I agree he uses his charm to talk clients into going along with his nonsense. Of course it didn't make any difference to my ME.
Sorry to see he's cashing in on long Covid too.
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I only got the 'free sample' DVD. Far from charming I found him very irritating.
 
It gets worse.
Another interesting point of comparison is the subclass of medical ailments known as “contested illnesses”—conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), multiple chemical sensitivities, and chronic Lyme disease, which don’t seem exist except as a sort of crowdsourced belief system among individuals who claim to be afflicted. While none of these movements have attained anything close to the political and academic prominence of gender theory, their most politically engaged proponents echo the now-familiar idea that their problems can be traced to an outwardly undetectable condition whose denial generates its own separate form of suffering.
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Bolding mine.

This could easily have been written 30 years ago. I have not heard of this site before, but it appears to be driven by a conservative ideology, and such ideologies by their very nature are not very open to changes in views - thus the outdated description of "CFS".
 
These people have no interest in actually listening to the experience of people, they're just interested in pushing their politically motivated worldview.

They're threatened by LongCovid because it suggests their policy of just letting young people get infected (because they'll get over it no problems) was a failure.
 
Obviously the line between “stuff we should pay attention to, in order to refute” and “drivel that is not even worth our time” is not always clear. But I think this is firmly in the latter category. Cultural conservatism is a scourge and I think this article was written for attention and clicks, not for actually contributing anything or changing minds. (As opposed to say, the Levine piece where he actually holds stock in his weird twisted worldview.)
 
mango said:
There's a paywalled editorial by the infamous Hanne Kjöller in Sweden's largest morning paper today. I don't have access, but I suspect the headline says it all...

"Specialist clinics for cultural illnesses function as early ill health retirement factories."

:banghead::banghead::banghead:

Specialistkliniker för kultursjukdomar fungerar som förtidspensioneringsfabriker
https://www.dn.se/ledare/hanne-kjol...ar-fungerar-som-fortidspensioneringsfabriker/

ETA: The framing/narrative she's using is so called "cultural illnesses" (psychological/emotional/existential/social threats are supposedly "internalised" and expressed as physical symptoms), referring to Karin Johannisson's earlier works. For more info on the psychosomatic concept "cultural illnesses" see posts here and here.
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Another opionion piece commenting on this, the "cultural illnesses" concept in particular:

”Begreppet slår på den som redan ligger”
https://www.svd.se/begreppet-kultursjukdom-slar-pa-den-som-redan-ligger

Google Translate, English
Google Translate said:
"The concept kicks those who are down"

The words we use when we talk about postcovid matter - and the concept of "cultural illness" is no longer useful, says medical historian Maria Josephson.

[...] How we express suffering, and how the outside world treats us, is socially constructed and thus changes over time. Illness gets its contours when it is communicated and legitimized in a context.

The concept of cultural illness was thus analytical, but also power-critical. By emphasizing that norms, hierarchies and ideals are internalized, and thus become part of illness expressions and symptoms, the concept suggested illness was a language for those who are otherwise not allowed to speak.

At the same time, it criticized medicine for being stuck in a view of biology as the primary one.

Since then, the world has turned upside down. It is no longer news that illness and suffering vary over time, or that societal transformation creates new diagnoses.

The obvious power position of medicine and healthcare could still be said to possess in the 90s, is also faltering today. The problem is no longer medicalization or overdiagnosis, but rather the increasingly limited resources of the healthcare system.

The past year has also illustrated how impossible it is to talk about research, or for that matter medicine, in definite singular form. Polarization and fragmentation is a fact.

The concept of cultural illness has thus lost both the analytical focus and the power-critical cape that was its core.

Only the vaguely disbelieving shades remain. Maybe the patient is not "really" sick? Maybe the symptoms are just "cultural"?

The National Board of Health and Welfare, the authority that decides on formal diagnostic definitions, is no stranger to the power of words: for example, they advised against the use of the term “burnout” when it began to spread, as it indicated that the condition was irreversible. [...]
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Psychiatrist Would Abandon Research on Long COVID and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Pretty good article by Llewellyn King, mostly about the recent awful opinion piece written by Jeremy Devine in the Wall Street Journal. He briefly mentions Wessely and Michael Sharpe and the latter's connections with the insurance industry.

"These theories of “It’s all in your head” have been renounced and found wanting by a myriad of experts and millions of patients around the world. Even the prestigious Institute of Medicine in the United States has come through on the patients’ side.

But psychiatry just doesn’t give up."​

Full article: https://insidesources.com/psychiatr...h-on-long-covid-and-chronic-fatigue-syndrome/
 
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Responding to article in post 665

It's more about gender ideology than about long covid.

The author is not very bright for thinking of long covid as an ideology.

Echoing the idea of “self-identification” as the gold standard of gender identity, the Long COVID survey authors brushed aside these facts, arguing that “future research must consider the experience of all people with COVID-19 symptoms, regardless of testing status.”
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This is being quoted out of context. What was meant including suspected long covid patients in research even if they do not have a positive covid test.
 
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Opinion piece by a journalist in the Norwegian financial newspaper Dagens Næringsliv titled: "Will Long-covid become the next fashion diagnosis? The fuzz can be making more people sick, experts claim"

It's paywalled, but here's a google translated quote:

A heated debate is taking place in the Journal of the Swedish Medical Association. The network «From doctor to doctor», consists of doctors who themselves have been covid-sick and experienced after-effects. They share all the information available about long-covid, and work to define the diagnosis. A separate clinic has also been established where long-term patients are referred.

Critics, including doctors, believe this contributes to the over-awareness that promotes the disease. They also believe that the doctor network, which is also a patient network, places too little emphasis on so-called biopsychosocial factors, ie how the psyche, the social and the biological interact. This in turn makes the network feel "psychologised" by its colleagues. They do not take that as a compliment.

And here we are right at the heart of similar debates around, for example, ME. Anyone who points to factors other than purely biological is perceived as trivializing the symptoms. But neither placebo nor nocebo is "imagination". A prank pill can do something about the actual, physical signals in the brain that cause pain. And vice versa: A physical condition is affected by whether we expect it to occur. Everything is connected to everything. But what is the right treatment and medicine, may depend on the cause of the symptoms.

Interestingly, the psychosocial effects of placebo and nocebo are highly dependent on the patient's relationship with the therapist. It is therefore important how healthcare professionals look for or do not look for symptoms that may fit into a diagnosis. The Norwegian doctor Henrik Vogt believes that the medical profession itself is part of the problem, and that medical information and doctors' attitudes can contribute to making the long-term effects chronic.
 
But what is the right treatment and medicine, may depend on the cause of the symptoms.
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which opens up a can of worms - where it is only a possibility that the correct treatment depends on what is actually wrong, implying that in 'some' cases what is actually wrong will have nothing to do with the 'correct' treatment.

Which means I have misunderstood what the aim of 'treatment' actually is, according to the medical system. It would seem it is not, as I have previously accepted, to treat the patients medical problems in a way that resolves them.
 
I wonder who is running the Edinburgh Long Covid clinic? Doesn't look like good people tagged in here:



Kalliope said:
Opinion piece by a journalist in the Norwegian financial newspaper Dagens Næringsliv titled: "Will Long-covid become the next fashion diagnosis? The fuzz can be making more people sick, experts claim"

It's paywalled, but here's a google translated quote:

A heated debate is taking place in the Journal of the Swedish Medical Association. The network «From doctor to doctor», consists of doctors who themselves have been covid-sick and experienced after-effects. They share all the information available about long-covid, and work to define the diagnosis. A separate clinic has also been established where long-term patients are referred.

Critics, including doctors, believe this contributes to the over-awareness that promotes the disease. They also believe that the doctor network, which is also a patient network, places too little emphasis on so-called biopsychosocial factors, ie how the psyche, the social and the biological interact. This in turn makes the network feel "psychologised" by its colleagues. They do not take that as a compliment.

And here we are right at the heart of similar debates around, for example, ME. Anyone who points to factors other than purely biological is perceived as trivializing the symptoms. But neither placebo nor nocebo is "imagination". A prank pill can do something about the actual, physical signals in the brain that cause pain. And vice versa: A physical condition is affected by whether we expect it to occur. Everything is connected to everything. But what is the right treatment and medicine, may depend on the cause of the symptoms.

Interestingly, the psychosocial effects of placebo and nocebo are highly dependent on the patient's relationship with the therapist. It is therefore important how healthcare professionals look for or do not look for symptoms that may fit into a diagnosis. The Norwegian doctor Henrik Vogt believes that the medical profession itself is part of the problem, and that medical information and doctors' attitudes can contribute to making the long-term effects chronic.
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If they're able to get away with portraying criticis of BPS approaches like this, it makes them easy to dismiss.
 
Kalliope said:
A prank pill can do something about the actual, physical signals in the brain that cause pain.
Click to expand...

[I'm assuming a prank pill is another name for a placebo.]

This kind of comment always startles me. If someone had pancreatitis (for example), the condition would be invisible, excruciatingly painful, and potentially fatal if left undiagnosed and untreated. I've never had pancreatitis, but I suspect if I developed the condition and went to my GP or my local hospital for help I would be assumed to be lying, or drug-seeking, or depressed or anxious. This is why I hate the BPS approach to anything. It doesn't actually treat anything, and increases the risk of death, and/or long-term complications, and/or chronic pain from non-diagnosis of a real physical problem. To me, BPS treatment comes across as being equivalent to torture.
 
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