Brian Hughes - If you spend 20 years gaslighting your patients, perhaps you should think twice before accusing *them* of trolling *you*

Cheshire

Cheshire

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Nonetheless, we can certainly say that Mr Liddle is very much on the side of the silenced scientists. I won’t quote him directly. Instead, I will direct you to Frances Ryan’s eloquent riposte over at The Guardian, where she identifies the vilification of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome patients as just yet another form of 21st-century hate speech.

But won’t somebody please think of those poor scientists?

Who are they, exactly? Well, here’s an old group photo that contains some of them:

lrm_export_13450332440649_20190321_105452085-01.jpeg

A group of people who were definitely *not* trolling anybody.
(Pic: Adapted from @BenMcNevis via Twitter)
Yep, there they are, attending a meeting on “Malingering and Illness Deception” way back in 2001 (and yes, I edited the image to blur their faces and remove their names, as a courtesy).

For 20 years, they have promoted a psychogenic model of ME/CFS. Their theory dismisses sufferers as psychiatric patients whose condition is all in the mind, rather than persons debilitated by authentic physical illness or disease.

But those terms though. “Malingering“? “Illness Deception“? Seriously? Even if the psychogenic theory were true, such labels are not very nice ways to describe patients. You might even consider them, well, abusive.
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https://notthesciencebit.net/2019/0...f-trolling-you/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
 
May I commend you @Brian Hughes for your extraordinary bravery in interacting with us here. In all of the interwebs, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum, villainy and anti-science trolls than S4ME. To actually log in here, using your real name as well, shows such daring and blatant disregard for your own personal well being - the world has probably never seen the like. ;)

Also, nice blog, thanks :)
 
Good article but I'm a little concerned about the use of 'malingering' with respect to the BPS model of CFS/ME. ''Malingering' refers to the fabrication of an illness and though the BPS lot have accused us of mistaking normal bodily sensations for the signs of disease they have never (to my knowledge) implied CFS/ME patients deliberately fake symptoms.
 
fivetowns said:
they have never (to my knowledge) implied CFS/ME patients deliberately fake symptoms.
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But that would fall outside an effective doublespeak. The doublespeak of biopsychosocial is intended to sound impressive and knowledgeable to patients while only meaning something else to doctors. To tell patients that they are malingering wouldn't work so well. And who knows what they actually think, since they change their story to fit every situation.
 
fivetowns said:
Good article but I'm a little concerned about the use of 'malingering' with respect to the BPS model of CFS/ME. ''Malingering' refers to the fabrication of an illness and though the BPS lot have accused us of mistaking normal bodily sensations for the signs of
disease they have never (to my knowledge) implied CFS/ME patients deliberately fake symptoms.
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I understand pwME ("cfs") have been called the undeserving sick by the PS'ers. I can't specifically recall the use of the term
"malingering"; it may have been used - to find out might take a bit of searching. Maybe someone else knows?
 
fivetowns said:
Good article but I'm a little concerned about the use of 'malingering' with respect to the BPS model of CFS/ME. ''Malingering' refers to the fabrication of an illness and though the BPS lot have accused us of mistaking normal bodily sensations for the signs of disease they have never (to my knowledge) implied CFS/ME patients deliberately fake symptoms.
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The title of the photograph in the article was "Malingering and Illness Deception Meeting". It wasn't Brian's choice to use the word "Malingering", it was the choice of word of the people who set up the conference.
 
It’s great to see this article by a psychologist. My only concern is that it sort of misrepresents the BPS model as them claiming our illness is psychogenic or a figment if the imagination which they don’t and someone like wessely can then dismiss everything valid, the 99% because of that
. I understand caricaturing them is useful for highlighting the ridiculousness and to simplify things but These psychiatrists invented a “third way’ illness model for CFS and other unexplained illness where we weren’t seriously sick but were genuinely debilitated because of a “complex interplay” of a physical trigger, an unhelpful behavioural response , inactivity and the bodily systems (circadian rhythm, increased sensitivity to normal signals etc) going Wrong, or something like that. This model was supposedly proven by the success of rehabilitation treatment based on this model rather than by research and is another reason i think why The treatments must for them remain valid.

The problem for me was the assumption there wasn’t serious anything biological that needed finding and how their theories Also encouraged other drs to think they way, or I assume that’s why no one seemed to think we needed a biomedical research effort.
 
DokaGirl said:
I understand pwME ("cfs") have been called the undeserving sick by the PS'ers. I can't specifically recall the use of the term
"malingering"; it may have been used - to find out might take a bit of searching. Maybe someone else knows?
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For further details of the 2001 conference held in Oxford entitled “Malingering and Illness Deception Meeting”, see page 2 of “ME: who is attacking whom?” by Eileen Marshall and Margaret Williams - http://www.margaretwilliams.me/2005/me-who-is-attacking-whom.pdf
 
Arnie Pye said:
@Cinders66 Did you notice the title of the photograph (above the picture) in Brian's article? That title has obviously been there a long time, I don't think it was something Brian added.
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Yes but I didn’t refer to that picture specifically and there were several descriptions in the article as the BPS drs basically thinking it all in the mind, when wessely has been on media very cleverly stressing that they don’t think it’s in the mind. Regarding the picture, has anyone dug deeper into context, was it CFS related? I think in the darker early days they were more harsh in their views. If anyone has seen old newspaper articles pictures, not online now, I think that they were even more offensive then.
 
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