BPS attempts at psychologizing Long Covid

[Wyva]

My ME brain read it as:

Outcome: The Impact of Covid Infection and Fatigue Experienced Thereafter Should Not Be Understood
#longcovid #cbt #compassion #pleasurableactivity

Not that it makes much of a difference.

 

[SNT Gatchaman]

 

[Wyva]

Hopefully it won't be turned into some sort of "long hauler campaigners are making it impossible for researchers to do their job, they are blocking science" kind of narrative.

 

[rvallee]

What Could Explain Long COVID?
The connection between mind and body could help us understand the ailment.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-new-normal/202112/what-could-explain-long-covid

No point quoting anything, it's the same old tripemill of sophistry and Freud-of-the-gaps rhetoric with a dash of "medicine can test for literally everything" hubris.

The author:



Yeah, that dude seems to be out there psychologizing whiplash and car accidents as psychological for the insurance industry:

For the last 15 years, he has specialized in auto accident trauma treatment and care. This involves helping accident survivors cope with physical and emotional conditions such as posttraumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, chronic pain, anxiety, and depression.

 

[rvallee]

There is nothing in the LC guidelines that forbids recommending LP. But that response. Damn, how low has medicine sunk? And how much lower will it?

 

[Three Chord Monty]

Hopefully it won't be turned into some sort of "long hauler campaigners are making it impossible for researchers to do their job, they are blocking science" kind of narrative.

 

[chrisb]

That is certainly an issue about which a sensible debate could be held?

Is condoning putting scarce resources into poor quality research, unlikely to provide useful information, a good look?

 

[SNT Gatchaman]

MS also preceded the above tweet with this one —

 

[TiredSam]

Is campaigning to stop research really a good look?

Campaigning to stop marketing and empire building disguised as research is a worthy endeavour in my opinion. What's this focus on "a good look" anyway? Just illustrates how Sharpe has got his priorities all wrong - not everyone is interested in building a career on looking good to the right people.

 

[TiredSam]

In fact Michael Sharpe can congratulate himself - for years he has been complaining that ME sufferers have been blocking psychological research, making himself believe that it is true, talking as if it were true, and now it has come to pass. What an amazing demonstration of the power of Michael Sharpe's mind.

 

[Ariel]

In fact Michael Sharpe can congratulate himself - for years he has been complaining that ME sufferers have been blocking psychological research, making himself believe that it is true, talking as if it were true, and now it has come to pass. What an amazing demonstration of the power of Michael Sharpe's mind.

 

[Mithriel]

Looking over the thread, comments about people with psychosomatic disease being more likely to attribute symptoms to physical rather than psychological causes reminded me of a research study in the early days of BPDS involvement which made me understand exactly what type of people were now involved with my health.

In order to research this question they did a study comparing the answers from ME patients to those from a control group. They specifically stated that they could not use a control group with chronic disease because "people with chronic disease are more likely to attribute symptoms to physical rather than psychological factors"

So they already knew the answer but did not consider ME a chronic disease and I bet this study was used to "prove" that it was just psychosomatic disease not all chronic disease that was the problem.

Their chosen control group was A&E on a Saturday night!

 

[rvallee]

Whatever this is... not even gonna bother reading, mostly to keep track.

"I believe". OK, don't. Beliefs have no place in health care or medical practice.

Also, uh, "post-pandemic". Whatever, some people truly live a universe of their own.



Edit: having seen a few quotes since, it's even dumber than usual, these people have lost all connection to reality please make it stop it's unbearable knowing so many efforts are happening to maximize the failure, this is not the way to do anything it's complete madness

 

[mango]

Yet another opinion piece on long covid as a cultural illness, by Swedish journalist Hanne Kjöller

Now with added smear against the postcovid specialist clinic in Solna and the Swedish Covid Association and its chairperson, as well as a rerun of the old comparisons to dental amalgam poisoning, resignation syndrome (apathetic asylum-seeking children), and so on.

Postcovid: Jakten på en biologisk förklaring och vad som gör patienterna friskare
https://kvartal.se/artiklar/postcovid/

Google Translate, English

Postcovid: The search for a biological explanation and what makes patients healthier

[...] according to [Johannisson's] definition, it is irrelevant whether one or the other symptom can be confirmed by medical examinations. Thus, it is not whether doctors "find something" that determines whether a new disease phenomenon should be characterised as a cultural illness. Rather, it is how the new diagnosis interacts with contemporary threats, how it is legitimized and disseminated that constitutes the essence of the cultural illness.2

The philosopher Fredrik Svenaeus uses different terms but basically describes the same phenomenon when he writes about suffering, identity and social contagion. He uses the comet as a metaphor, describing a hard core represented by disease and a tail "of all the suffering caught up in the pull of the nuclei in search of the identity and legitimacy that a shining comet offers".

So why am I even bringing up the epidemic of apathetic children? The answer is because there are also similarities. Then, as now, there was a group of doctors who argued that the patients were suffering from severe illness and that they needed advanced specialist care in hospitals. Then, as now, there was another group who argued that hospital treatment made patients sicker and that patients should be cared for in outpatient settings instead. Then, as now, it was the doctors who kept patients in specialist care - and not those who managed to get patients back to a reasonably normal life - who were presented as the real experts in the media narrative.

Hedlund, President of the Swedish Covid Association [...] is on full-time sick leave, is the message from the switchboard when I call Hedlund's employer on several occasions during the autumn of 2021. There is no date for a planned return to work.

Full-time sick leave is, according to social security regulations, equal to zero percent work capacity.25 But Hedlund has hardly rested on her laurels during her sick leave. There are video recordings online from both the National Board of Health and Welfare and universities where she is an invited speaker.26 What I see is a razor-sharp and articulate lobbyist.

When reading the report of the patient association for the first half of 2020, one is struck by the high level of activity: the many campaigns, articles, publications and representations. And the four clear objectives set out under the heading of influence:

1. To include long covid in the pandemic narrative
2. To ensure more research on long covid and multidisciplinary clinics in all regions
3. To stop the 180 days limit on long-term sickness benefit
   
4. That children with long covid must be given special attention

It's like looking into a PR agency. With the difference that the work is done by people who are ill and partially or totally unable to work. And who are at least partially supported by the Social Insurance Agency.28

 

[Wonko]

 

[Ash]

Ah well, the tweet got deleted. From a mental health nurse, showing a slide of a recent Trudie Chalder talk about mental health in LC. Tagged #mentalhealth and #cbt of course.

So Chalder is still going around "teaching" people about her pseudoscience.

Since it's still in my bookmarks:

Can't find what it is, @theparcproject here should have been a hashtag but there's not much on it: https://twitter.com/search?q=#theparcproject&src=typed_query&f=top.

Do you have a screen shot of the deleted tweet?

 

[Ash]

Looking over the thread, comments about people with psychosomatic disease being more likely to attribute symptoms to physical rather than psychological causes reminded me of a research study in the early days of BPDS involvement which made me understand exactly what type of people were now involved with my health.

In order to research this question they did a study comparing the answers from ME patients to those from a control group. They specifically stated that they could not use a control group with chronic disease because "people with chronic disease are more likely to attribute symptoms to physical rather than psychological factors"

So they already knew the answer but did not consider ME a chronic disease and I bet this study was used to "prove" that it was just psychosomatic disease not all chronic disease that was the problem.

Their chosen control group was A&E on a Saturday night!

 

[mango]

Yet another opinion piece on long covid as a cultural illness, by Swedish journalist Hanne Kjöller

Now with added smear against the postcovid specialist clinic in Solna and the Swedish Covid Association and its chairperson, as well as a rerun of the old comparisons to dental amalgam poisoning, resignation syndrome (apathetic asylum-seeking children), and so on.

Postcovid: Jakten på en biologisk förklaring och vad som gör patienterna friskare
https://kvartal.se/artiklar/postcovid/

Google Translate, English

After 24 hours, I feel in every atom that I have probably been victim to a crime in the national media. Slander.

But the patient movement and democracy too are under attack when sick people are portrayed as benefit scammers simply for advocating for recognition and adequate health care.

Exposing and questioning individual patients in this way is downright disgusting. The perception of AIDS was largely influenced by activists who held demonstrations and took part in the scientific debate. I suppose they were also lobbyists with a cultural illness?

 

[rvallee]

Do you have a screen shot of the deleted tweet?

Sorry, no.

 

[rvallee]

So Long Covid has basically opened up the floodgates for even more open hostility. Are the newspapers just milking this or is this narrative being pushed by authorities? Most of the claims made in this last one are farcical and obviously nonsense, what kind of responsibility does a newspaper have in enabling discrimination with real life consequences against a disabled community? This is a blatant campaign of hate-mongering and maligning of a vulnerable population. What is the journalistic value of publishing hate speech like this?

I thought I saw the ugliest side of humanity in politics but this is on another level. It's cruel for the sake of cruelty alone, using it as a hammer to make us more hated and keep us voiceless. And meanwhile the overwhelming reports from the patients is that this is a dystopian nightmare, and the only response to that is more and worse dystopian nightmare. Complete indifference to consent, in a way that suggests that this is likely a major problem that needs to be evaluated independently all over health care systems this, it's impossible to be that cruel to so many and be a completely unique exception.

Again, what lessons from the AIDS crisis? Every single one of the failures remain in full, in some cases worse than ever. It even got uglier, somehow, probably with the understanding that patient advocacy can easily be crushed as long as it's so hated no one wants anything to do with it. And as long as we can't mount a real threat.

That's kind of a big own:

What I see is a razor-sharp and articulate lobbyist.

If you see in us razor-sharp and articulate people, it may be because your idea of razor-sharp and articulate is to mindlessly peddle recycled 19th century snake oil. They easily have a 100:1 advantage over us and still whine that we don't have zero.