Covid-19 - Psychological research and treatment

We believe it is possible, and cost-effective, ...
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That's the whole of their sales pitch, right there. The rest is just waffle and padding. The prospective customers (politicians and insurance industry) prefer these barely plausible but cost-saving beliefs to be dressed up to sound sciency (makes it easier to justify to the public and the media, and a way to wriggle out if there's any criticism 30 years later), but basically everyone's on the same page. Not sure how useful it is to criticize the science here, given than none of the major players give a toss. Except the patients of course, but they're not major players. The real story is about careers, reputations, knighthoods and money. Patients are just assigned a minor part, extras if you will to provide a necessary backdrop to the stars. And what star can bear extras getting above themselves and spoiling the performance, pointing out glaring inconsistencies in the script?
 
I’ve not watched it but know he works for Crawley.
Phil Hammond outlining his approach and talks about covid.

 
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Fluff. Sleep hygiene, healthy eating and pop psychology (usually introduced with "we know that ... "), have 5 portions of fun a day ... mindfulness ... notice the beauty of the world around you ...

Talks about acceptance and commitment, ie accepting what you can't change, but then it turns out he means accepting you can't change the daily news so don't get anxious, which apparently a third of us do. But we can change our health ...

Get some rose tinted spectacles, practise gratitude, oh FFS I can't watch any more.

At least I was able to find some irony in his fondness for clangers.
 
The world, and indeed reality, is not beautiful.

It only appears to be because finding some things beautiful, desirable, etc. is hardwired into us by evolution.

Reality itself is a cruel and evil construct, probably constructed by the sort of mind that likes pulling wings and legs off of things, for amusement.

For everything that someone/thing perceives as beautiful, a trillion billion gazillion other things have had to be horrifically destroyed. Just to be able to perceive anything trillions of things are being destroyed within 'you' every second - we call it life, we call it 'beautiful' as without it we wouldn't be, but at a fundamental level, virtually everything involved is being changed, destroyed, and forced into new configurations (without consent) all the time.

The very definition of evilality ;)
 
Posttraumatic stress symptoms and associated comorbidity during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ireland: A population based study

https://psyarxiv.com/mnbxf/
The prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as it relates to people’s experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic has yet to determined. This study was conducted to determine rates of COVID-19 related PTSD in the Irish general population, the level of comorbidity with depression and anxiety, and sociodemographic risk factors associated with COVID-19 related PTSD. A nationally representative sample of adults from the general population of the Republic of Ireland (N = 1,041) completed self-report measures of all study variables. The rate of COVID-19 related PTSD was 17.7% (95% CI = 15.35 - 19.99%: n=184), and comorbidity with generalized anxiety (49.5%) and depression (53.8%) was high. Meeting the diagnostic requirement for COVID-19 related PTSD was associated with younger age, male sex, living in a city, living with children, moderate and high perceived risk of COVID-19 infection, and screening positive for anxiety or depression. Traumatic stress problems related to the COVID-19 pandemic are common in the general population. Our results show that health professionals responsible for responding to the COVID-19 pandemic should expect to routinely encounter traumatic stress problems.
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The recipe is as predictable as it's mediocre: 1) show there is "trauma" / mass hysteria from the epidemic 2) fabricate a link between trauma and long-term symptoms 3) psychogenic symptoms.

Pathologizing normal behavior is absurd. Psychiatry is out of control.
 
TiredSam said:
Fluff. Sleep hygiene, healthy eating and pop psychology (usually introduced with "we know that ... "), have 5 portions of fun a day ... mindfulness ... notice the beauty of the world around you ...

Talks about acceptance and commitment, ie accepting what you can't change, but then it turns out he means accepting you can't change the daily news so don't get anxious, which apparently a third of us do. But we can change our health ...

Get some rose tinted spectacles, practise gratitude, oh FFS I can't watch any more.

At least I was able to find some irony in his fondness for clangers.
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Thanks for the summary Sam I couldn't bring myself to watch it.
 
Is there really a Covid mental health crisis?
The coronavirus disaster has obviously brought with it an epidemic of anxiety and depression. Or has it?
BY Tom Chivers
Careless science can lead to wrong conclusions amazingly easily. Psychology has learnt that lesson more harshly than most disciplines, having suffered huge and embarrassing setbacks during the “replication crisis”. What it has discovered is that some precautions are vital. Some of these are slightly technical-sounding but important, such as preregistration of hypotheses, and committing to publishing regardless of the results, which avoid innocent and deliberate statistical malpractice. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s vital to share your data and methods, so other researchers can check your work.
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The “validity” of a scientific measure is how well it applies to the real world. For instance, most research into smartphones and mental health has been carried out using one of several questionnaires which asked people about their phone use. But a study last year discovered that how much people thought they used their phones was only tangentially related to how much they actually used it, as recorded by a special app. So the phone-use scales are not very valid: they aren’t very accurate at measuring the thing they’re supposed to be measuring.

Validity is crucial in psychology, because so much of it is based on questionnaires and surveys.
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It’s important because, if that scale is picked up, other people will do research using it. So they might do a trial of some antidepressant, and measure subjects’ suicidality scores on this scale before and after. Then, if the subjects’ scores improve, the authors can say “this drug improves scores on the Chivers Suicidality Scale by an average of 11 points”. And it might get picked up by NICE and given to patients by the NHS.
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But the point is: we would all have confidently predicted, like Nguyen and Weinstein, that lockdown would make people living alone more lonely, more anxious and more depressed. They didn’t find that. Psychological research is messy and hard; it demonstrates the importance of really good, careful science, especially in messy topics like psychology, and especially in fast-moving situations like this. “This is a good opportunity to practise all the stuff that came out of the replication crisis to make sure that the answers we get are the right ones,” says Etchells. Open data, preregistered hypotheses, well-validated scales: we know this stuff is important.
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https://unherd.com/2020/07/is-there-really-a-covid-mental-health-crisis/
 
Brain fog, fatigue, breathlessness. Rehab centers set up across Europe to treat long-term effects of coronavirus

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/19/health/long-covid-italy-uk-gbr-intl/index.html

Despite there being no evidence of any benefits, clinicians and researchers are already using GET while promising that it works:
"What surprises me the most is that even the patients that have not spent any time in the ICU are extremely feeble: there is no evidence of a cardiological or pulmonary problem, but they are not even able to walk up a flight of stairs," he said. "Most show a serious muscle weakness. A 52-year-old nurse had to go back to work after having recovered from Covid, but she just couldn't physically make it.
"The positive thing is that, after a period of exercise in our gym, most of them can recover efficiently."
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"It was nice to know that I wasn't alone in experiencing such consequences of the disease. My rehab consists mainly in carrying out regular physical exercise in the center's gym, every time increasing a bit the load and intensity of the exercises. And after a month and a half I feel better. I hope in mid-August to be able to return to work," he said.
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Will there be medical care for those made significantly worse? Community support? Financial support? Likely not. I guess the bastards just don't want to get better.
 
lycaena said:
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Skipped to just the RMM bits... they were annoying. So what the PVFS work Simon and she have done apparently means they "know as to how to, kind of, facilitate recovery and support people" and this can be extrapolated to 'long-covid'.

"What covid's really showing us is the importance of getting the right help early on"... how has it shown us that?

They need to be "providing the correct behavioral advice is to gradually returning to activity" - how does she know what is correct?

Avoiding boom and bust..?

Prof Lynne Turner--Stokes has her own concerns about MUS patients, eg:

Some patients

Require their ‘medical condition’
Part of own strategy for dealing with life

Come to clinic
Not for a ‘cure’
For support and bona fide status
Of ‘being under care of the doctor’

Remove the crutch
They will find another.

[Slide 26]

Secondary gain

Disability may hold advantages for them
Financial / Environmental Benefits, equipment, accommodation
Support, care and attention From family , friends / carers
Excuse for avoidance
E.g of unwanted sexual attentions
Social mystique or importance
Having a ‘rare condition’

[Slide 27]
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https://www.eapm.eu.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/EACLPP_Turner_MUS_2002.pdf
 
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Prof Lynne Turner Stokes should spend a month living under the same roof as someone she labels as MUS - see what she thinks about the ‘social mystique or importance’ then.

eta I mean really - social mystique is right up there with catastrophising on the talking bullocks scale
 
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