rvallee
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Uhhhh. Seriously? Of course. I mean, absolutely of course.Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Short form
Uhhhh. Seriously? Of course. I mean, absolutely of course.Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Short form
Ah. Yes. Good old optional requirements. Those are common nowadays.Objective metrics for severity and recovery are required...
They got that much right, at least.
Nailed it.
I completely agree, it has all potential to be a massive scandal (but many things may have).If there was any accountability in medicine this would be a massive scandal.
It shows a lack of any real responsibility, which is more than just only doing and letting what is commonly monitored (so to say).This goes beyond incompetence and malpractice, it's malicious criminal neglect.
This is a logical possibility, especially when the illness is utterly complex anyway. I would expect that researcher are able to figure this out, but no, this is commonly too difficult to consider."Emotional lability" (mood swings) is one of the symptoms that Ramsey noted, so the illness could actually be causing symptoms that look like neuroticism.
If the "neuroticsm" is directly caused by the illness there won´t be many a chance, and you can interpret whatever you want anyway. I think btw, that the reasonable possibilities @Invisible Woman mentioned are not important (if you are not in a really bad situation), at least this is my impression from forums and in my own experience.... They should want to assess your psychological state as soon as possible after onset (since that's the earliest they'd see you), but, even then, it may be too late to distinguish some sort of psychological predisposition from the effects of the disease itself.
Testing a hypothesis they probably themselves do not really believe in ... ah no, it´s of course only "too clear".The only sure way to study this would be to do a prospective psychological categorization of a huge cohort of physically well people and then see if those few who come down with a severe infection fair differently if they'd shown prior signs of neuroticism. ...
Ok, I think, after googling Hazard Ratios, I have understood this a bit. (But, be warned, I may not have.)
Reduced likelihood of recovery was significantly predicted by greater initial symptom severity for all endophenotypes (all p's < 0.001), as well as higher levels of trait neuroticism.
CONCLUSIONS:
Individual psychological and psychosocial factors contribute to the initial severity and to the prolonged course of symptoms after naturally-occurring infective illnesses. These factors may play an independent role, represent a bias in symptom reporting, or reflect increased stress responsivity and a heightened inflammatory response. Objective metrics for severity and recovery are required to further elucidate their roles.
Thanks @Simone, it's been on my list to write letters to the various funders. It's still on my list. Maybe we can collaborate on something?
Individual psychological and psychosocial factors contribute to the initial severity and to the prolonged course of symptoms after naturally-occurring infective illnesses. These factors may play an independent role, represent a bias in symptom reporting, or reflect increased stress responsivity and a heightened inflammatory response. Objective metrics for severity and recovery are required to further elucidate their roles.
One other thing to say, Cate, about the triggers for onset, or the causative factors, is that, umm, there really isn't good systematic evidence to implicate anything else. There's a, especially amongst the lay community, there's sometimes a notion that people who are, how to describe this, 'psychologically vulnerable' you know, who have a predisposition to mood disorder genetically or from their family background. That's, in that Dubbo Study, not a risk factor for onset. Life stresses, you know, so if you are busy as hell at work, or you know you are bringing in the wheat crop for 24 hours a day for days on end, none of that is a risk factor for onset. Nothing else has been clearly implicated to be associated with the onset of the disorder.
It's very odd.
CONCLUSIONS:
Individual psychological and psychosocial factors contribute to the initial severity and to the prolonged course of symptoms after naturally-occurring infective illnesses.
The syndrome was predicted largely by the severity of the acute illness rather than by demographic, psychological, or microbiological factors.
Also, I think it's important to be very clear. The data did not show what Cvejic et al claimed.The Cvejic analysis of follow-up data found that higher neuroticism score predicts lower likelihood of recovery.
So we think I've interpreted right then? That being neurotic had virtually no impact on the likelihood of people developing ME/CFS symptoms in this sample?
If that's the case, then I think the authors have deliberately played games in the abstract.
It will almost certainly influence what future studies are funded. The paper was funded by the Mason Foundation, the NHMRC and the CDC.
Neuroticism and the sense of loss of control is generally seen as a bad thing in terms of recovery. I can see some reasons why but isn't there also a flip side for some?
For those feeling a loss of control complying strictly with a treatment regime, assuming it isn't making you worse like GET for ME patients, could give some a sense of control with the added motivation of regaining control of other aspects of your life.
Those who are neurotic might also tend to pay much greater attention to the fine details of their treatment & less likely to make mistakes such as taking their meds at the wrong time.
So if neuroticism & feeling a loss of control might cause issues in recovery for some, they also might increase the chance of recovery for others.
So I can see why neuroticism & control might not make much difference overall to recovery as described by @Hutan's finding.
We started explaining away the abstract headline about increased neuroticism found in patients who went on to develop post-infection fatigue syndrome in the study, which is easy enough to do.Worth putting a copy of the questions in the neuroticism part of the scale up here. They relate to things like 'worry a lot' and self-consciousness of what people think of you.
One caveat is that the variables aren't standardised z-scores. So the hazard ratio's are representative of a one unit increase in the specified variable rather than 1 standard deviation increase. I don't know why researchers do this because it makes it hard to interpret the effect size and compare the influence of different factors.If your measured 'Neuroticism' score is one standard deviation higher than average, the 0.97 means that you have a 97% of the chance of being recovered that a participant with the average 'Neuroticism' score had, at any point in time