BPS attempts at psychologizing Long Covid

Kalliope said:
Two doctors, two scientists and one specialist director from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health has written an opinion piece for the public broadcaster NRK where they are downplaying Long Covid and accusing the media for exaggerating its severity.

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health has taken a psychosomatic approach to ME over many years and some representatives are actively enthusiastic about Lightning Process.

It doesn't come as a surprise that they don't take Long Covid seriously.

Few long Covid patients are referred to specialists, and this seems to be good enough proof that they're not suffering from anything severe. But the problem is rather that there are no post-viral specialists the GPs can refer patients to..

Senskader og sensasjon
google translation: After effects and sensation

Quote:
Several media reports recently have given the impression that there are extensive late effects after covid-19, also after mild illness. This is not in line with the knowledge we have so far.

We must de-dramatize the late effects of Covid-19. The media has a responsibility. They must become more critical of the research methods used in the studies they discuss.

Most infectious diseases with a serious course will to a certain extent have late effects. Most infectious diseases with a mild course will cause few and short-term ailments.

A growing selection of studies shows that this is probably the case for covid-19 as well. It is very important that several good studies are carried out to shed light on this issue.

Data from FHI's emergency register, BeredtC19 , includes about 2 million Norwegians who have been tested for SARS-CoV-2. It shows a short-term and time-limited increase in the number of contacts with general practitioners - GPs and emergency services - after a mild course of covid-19.

The study shows no increase in specialist health service use when compared with those who have tested negative.

The media has overdramatized studies without good comparison groups.

When the ailments exclusively can be assessed and treated by the general practitioner, it means that the majority of the ailments are most likely mild - even though they can still be perceived as bothersome for the person concerned.
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I could not read more than a few paragraphs of this. Registry data, that they claim show nothing serious occurs, have a lot of flaws when it comes to this. How can they make this argument with a straight face?
 
Hey, isn't that a variation of "we have no evidence of complaints" when it is impossible to record complaints, justified by the lack of accepted complaints.

Are they that dense? Or just that malicious? Surely they can't be so lacking in self-awareness to not understand that refusing to provide services is not evidence that there is no demand for it? This can only be willful deception and it's not exactly subtle.

What's the worst that could happen when medical experts are complicit in blatantly lying about public health matters in a time of pandemic where trust in experts is critical? I guess we'll find out.
 
Wyva said:
I'm not sure if this is due to the different circumstances, different history/current perception of such illnesses in different countries, and I'm not part of any foreign/internation long hauler groups. But in the Hungarian LC group there are plenty of people who say they have panic attacks or anxiety or depression as part of the illness.

I'm on very good terms with the admin of the biggest long hauler Facebook group and she is extremely frustrated with this, she believes people probably just parrot what their doctors say and/or what they hear from the media about LC all the time. She is convinced there is nothing mental about this (she has LC herself) and so are many others but I can definitely see people who describe at least some of their symptoms as mental. (My own impression from their description is that at least some of these people did have panic attacks etc pre-covid too.)

This might be different elsewhere though. Here, it is extremely rare to hear about the kind of long covid in the media that we discuss here. With a few exceptions they only report about loss of taste and smell, different kinds of organ damage and psychological issues. And this may influence some patients' perception. I don't know, just guessing.
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I believe that immunologically mediated inflammatory processes in the brain can have subtle and not so subtle consequences for mental processes.

From what I have read of other peoples' accounts of their experiences with ME some people do experience this and some do not. I dont know if they have the same condition and are responding differently to it or have different kinds of condition, but if you find that dichotomy in a longcovid group then it is safe to say it suggests differences in the patients' responses to the same viral challenge leading to a situation where some may have CNS inflammation and some may not.

Personally I did experience changes in brain function due to ME related inflammation subsequent to an abnormal viral infection, which lead to a wide range of experiences from very low mental function when I felt like a zombie to periods of mental overactivity to the extent that I had a period which I would say was close to a psychotic break. What many but not all PWME do report besides being drained of energy is paradoxical disturbingly powerful surges of adrenalin for no apparent reason, which might equate with some of the reported panic attacks.

I think Nancy Klimas was trying to understand that as part of her cytokine studies but I am not sure how far she got with it.
 
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Developing a Collaborative Approach to Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 Infection
https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/vi...oach-post-acute-sequelae-sars-cov-2-infection


This is probably worth responding to. It is so insulting in its premise, especially as it calls for a collaboration with patients, from the safety and comfort of an article written by psychiatrists for psychiatrists, with zero patient input. Because of course "collaboration" is not possible here, you can't bridge two positions when one of those positions is the very denial of reality that has caused actual regression in what is supposed to be a scientific issue.

Notable though is what they present as what they bring to the "collaboration": nothing. Just go through their arguments and see if you can spot anything there, at all. Just cheap speculation about what could happen if this were true, following decades of pushing this coercively onto people loudly rejecting it. Spelled out here it's absolutely pathetic, I would be ashamed of presenting this as the work of a single person, let alone thousands of people working for well over a century.

A polite: no and go away, never come back, never even think of us again, you are the very reason why medicine has failed to make any progress. There will be no collaboration to people whose idea of collaboration is subservient compliance and have nothing to bring, for the very same reason there is no possibility of collaboration between HIV deniers and the AIDS patient community.

It's not a scientific journal so the process would be different. But I think it's worth popping the bubble right there, that there will be no collaboration on their terms because their terms are exactly the problem here. I don't know which of ignorance or hubris plays the bigger role here but, wow.
 
A researcher of anxiety and OCD at McMaster University has been aggressively (or dare I say, obsessively) touting on reddit for participants to complete a survey on "mental health and covid":

Researchers at McMaster University are conducting this survey to find out how getting the COVID-19 virus impacts the wellbeing and behaviours of affected individuals. This page describes the purpose and methodology of the survey. This study is being conducted by Dr. Michael Van Ameringen and is not funded. If you need more information before you agree to participate, please contact Beth at bpatter@mcmaster.ca or 905-921-7644.
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The description is reasonably benign-sounding but I suspect they'll do their best to blame long covid on 'anxiety'. I wonder if Jeremy Devine is involved?
 
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Dolphin said:

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Kinda feel like pointing out that this is by far the most widespread opinion in medicine, it's just that people are usually not exposed to it and when they are they just don't believe it. It has to be personally experienced to be believed. I'm saying this mostly because I've seen many comments pointing out he isn't a MD and how a MD would never say something like this. Which: hahaha, good one, you must be new here.

It's sad that we can't do any of this work, but it would be worth airing out what medical professionals are saying in their forums. I guarantee that it's far more nasty than this on average but otherwise in the exact same framing. A few are sympathetic, sure, but most are perfectly fine with the "pandemic stress" junk, it's what they use in practice on a regular basis and have for many decades.

Many pwME are pointing it out about ME/CFS, but it seems not to have been fully realized that the very same thinking is firmly in place for Long Covid and has been from the start: denial, in full, without end. Aside from a few who take this seriously, the vast majority of physicians have little to no interest in any of this, they've already compartmentalized it in the psychosomatic bin and apply it in everyday practice, have from the beginning. Most wouldn't even think twice about it if it were successfully suppressed.

Honestly feels kind of weird alongside the massive flooding in Europe and interviews coming out from people shocked that this could happen in a rich country. People always feel that this kind of bad luck happens to others in far away lands, it's a shock when it happens to you but people only ever get the lesson if and when it applies to them completely, as we have seen with Garner-type responses.

This is just the ugly face of medicine, Dr Hyde, that almost no one ever sees and when they do it's always in private and always in weasel language like dingus here used. Just trying to think of how bad this would all have been if it had happened 20 years ago, before the ubiquity of the Internet. It would have stood no chance and shows just how easy it was to dismiss events like Royal Free and Lake Tahoe, there's a thirst, almost a horniness, for this magical explanation, a firm belief in the just-world fallacy, that until it happens to them, people just don't care, don't bother, it's for others.

Also: guaranteed that Wessely's hands are working in the shadows of this, this isn't time for R"C"T's, it's time for FOIA's.
 
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8270567/
New Sci. 2021 Jul 10; 250(3342): 31.
Published online 2021 Jul 9. doi: 10.1016/S0262-4079(21)01198-2
PMCID: PMC8270567
PMID: 34305247
Letters

From Ingrid Wall, Cambridge, UK

Your article covered much-needed information about the causes of long covid and its similarities with chronic fatigue syndrome.

However, it is a pity that the discussion wasn't broadened to other comparable conditions, such as functional neurological disorder and conversion disorder. The similarities of these to long covid have been reviewed in recent medical publications. I firmly believe that investigations into long covid may shed light on these too.
 
I'm not sure that it is 'not a nice letter'. One of the links in the letter is to a paper that referred to both CFS and FND as neurological conditions and concluded:
Conclusions
Implications for neurological healthcare services in the UK may include longer waiting times and a need for more resources (including more qualified health professionals). There is also a possible change-effect on health professionals’ perceptions of other neurological conditions such as CFS and FND. Future research is recommended to explore changes in health professionals’ perceptions of neurological symptoms because of COVID-19.
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I think the letter writer may actually have been saying, 'look, you said Long Covid is a lot like CFS - maybe a better understanding of Long Covid will make people reassess all the conditions currently in the BPS dustbin'. Often important points are lost when editors truncate letters for publication.
 
Researchers in NUI Galway are seeking people who have experienced unusual symptoms during the pandemic for a new psychological study.

Experiences can range from a feeling of detachment from the body, or the world around them, to a change in taste or smell, seeing different colours or shades, haziness, IBS, and headaches.

Researchers are investigating whether psychological factors can contribute to medically unexplained physical symptoms and a sense of disconnection.
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https://www.independent.ie/irish-ne...ogical-symptoms-during-pandemic-40691704.html

Information sheet

Title of Project: A study investigating how emotional awareness and childhood experiences relate to psychological wellbeing in adulthood.
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https://nuigalwaybusiness.fra1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_72SppsPgRlKtGUS
 
From.@Dolphin's post #872 above
Experiences can range from a feeling of detachment from the body, or the world around them, to a change in taste or smell, seeing different colours or shades, haziness, IBS, and headaches.
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Bolding mine.

Err.....aren't changes to or loss of taste and smell very common covid symptoms? So they could hardly be termed as

Researchers in NUI Galway are seeking people who have experienced unusual symptoms during the pandemic for a new psychological study.
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In fact none of the symptoms listed would be all that unusual in an illness with a fever,except maybe IBS.
 
2 posts copied from News about Long Covid

New film from Gez Medinger titled: The Psychologisation if Illness - Why Long Covid (and ME/CFS) Are Not 'Just Anxiety'

Panel consists of:
Professor Brian Hughes, Psychology - National University of Ireland
Dr Nina Muirhead - Specialist Surgeon, Dermatology, ME sufferer
Sarah Graham - Author, founder of Hysterical Women blog
Dr Shaun Qureshi - Specialist Registrar, Palliative Medicine & Long Hauler
Dr Ian Frayling - Consultant in Genetic Pathology, Long Hauler



ETA: Just watched it now and highly recommend it!! Prof. Hughes and Dr. Muirhead were as always excellent, but the whole panel was really good. Hope this reaches many people.
 
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Kalliope said:
New film from Gez Medinger titled: The Psychologisation if Illness - Why Long Covid (and ME/CFS) Are Not 'Just Anxiety'

Panel consists of:
Professor Brian Hughes, Psychology - National University of Ireland
Dr Nina Muirhead - Specialist Surgeon, Dermatology, ME sufferer
Sarah Graham - Author, founder of Hysterical Women blog
Dr Shaun Qureshi - Specialist Registrar, Palliative Medicine & Long Hauler
Dr Ian Frayling - Consultant in Genetic Pathology, Long Hauler



ETA: Just watched it now and highly recommend it!! Prof. Hughes and Dr. Muirhead were as always excellent, but the whole panel was really good. Hope this reaches many people.
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Part 2 is out. From the description:

This is part 2 of our feature on the psychologisation of chronic illness, specifically Long Covid and ME/CFS. In this film we’ll be covering the tricky topic of sticking up for yourself in the face of healthcare providers trying to tell you it’s all in your head - or at least 'just' anxiety or stress.

This is the panel, interviewed by Dr Asad Khan and myself:

Professor Brian Hughes, Psychology - National University of Ireland
Dr Nina Muirhead - Specialist Surgeon, Dermatology, ME sufferer
Sarah Graham - Author, founder of Hysterical Women blog
Dr Shaun Qureshi - Specialist Registrar, Palliative Medicine & Long Hauler
Dr Ian Frayling - Consultant in Genetic Pathology, Long Hauler

CHAPTERS:
0:00 Introduction
2:20 How Did We Get Here?
5:32 Why Medicine jumps to GET/CBT
8:12 History Repeating Itself
9:45 Positive Future - Paradigm Shift?
14:33 What Can Patients Do?
21:32 Conclusion


 
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