Open Emotion-focused digital interventions for patients with medically unexplained symptoms, Maroti et al

There was an ad in the newspaper DN.se today, inviting people to apply to participate in this study by Swedish BPS proponents Daniel Maroti et al (who are also running the MBS study). Not a recommendation, obvs.

Känslofokuserade digitala interventioner för patienter med medicinskt oförklarade symtom
https://www.su.se/forskning/forskningsprojekt/känslofokuserade-digitala-interventioner-för-patienter-med-medicinskt-oförklarade-symtom

Vill du vara med i en vetenskaplig studie kring behandling av långvariga kroppsliga symtom?
https://www.su.se/forskning/forskningsprojekt/känslofokuserade-digitala-interventioner-för-patienter-med-medicinskt-oförklarade-symtom/vill-du-vara-med-i-en-vetenskaplig-studie-kring-behandling-av-långvariga-kroppsliga-symtom-1.657965

 

That they still include migraines in this just shows how intellectually bankrupt this whole ideology is. If it wasn't for Marshall and his team, peptic ulcers would still be THE main, uh, I guess it's "mind-body syndrome" now, and we all know that. But even though migraines have had significant breakthroughs over pathophysiology and treatment, there is a huge delay in how knowledge gets translated into medical practice and research, so somehow they are still there. Along with back pain? And whiplash? Good grief.

Medicine is the only expert profession to have ever regressed over time. And this isn't growing pains, medicine is the oldest expert profession in the world, it has existed for thousands of years. There are entire expert disciplines that are newer than the entire CBT/GET paradigms and never even came close to this level of ineptitude. Because results actually matter in those.

This is really the medical equivalent of "tough on crime". It's well-documented that this approach doesn't work, is far more expensive and even leads to worse outcomes. But even though it's generically asinine, it sounds good when you want to get elected to office. You have to be tough on criminals, how could you not? Just the same, medicine has to be evidence-based, how coud it not? And people who are ill have to be rehabilitated, how could they not? Results don't matter, methods don't matter, it's just a giant circle jerk based entirely on the hubris that they could not possibly not understand everything yet, and therefore anything they don't understand is this magical nonsense where results conveniently never matter.

And of course the people most likely to participate in such a trial are more likely to want to please and answer positively, even if they end up worse. And so the failure loops on forever, the money trolley just keeps chugging along the tracks. Incredible.

 

There's a pretty insulting comment by one of the psychologists responsible for the study, under Maroti's public Facebook post about the study. Is he not aware of the "a day with the muppets" debacle, or does he simply not give a eff?

Very good to see, though, that Nina E Steinkopf and others have questioned the inclusion of pwME. Maroti apparently hasn't even bothered to reply

 

Per Fink was Maroti's opponent at his disputation (EAET) in January 2023. Indre Bileviciute-Ljungar one of his advisors.

Titel: Internet-based emotional awareness and expression therapy for functional somatic disorders
https://nyheter.ki.se/kalender/disputation-daniel-maroti

 

Interview with Maroti in Psykologtidningen, published September 2023. Including some personal background info on why he chose this particular field (sick family members, and himself suffering from MUS in the form of iron deficiency and a knee injury).

https://psykologtidningen.se/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Psykologlogtidningen_nr6_LOW.pdf

 

Another article published in September 2023:

Funktionella somatiska symtom och nya behandlingsperspektiv: Psykodynamisk känslofokuserad korttidsterapi har god effekt
https://lakartidningen.se/klinik-oc...matiska-symtom-och-nya-behandlingsperspektiv/

 

How can either of those be classified as MUS? Iron deficiency is the most common nutrient deficiency in the world, and how can someone not say to their doctor "Oh, I hurt my knee last month and it isn't getting better, can you take a look at it?"

 

Link to the 2017 study mentioned in the article:

Differences in alexithymia and emotional awareness in exhaustion syndrome and chronic fatigue syndrome

Daniel Maroti, Peter Molander, Indre Bileviciute-Ljungar

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sjop.12332

 

He says they happened at a time in his life with lots of psychological stress, but doesn't go much into detail beyond that.

 

I can't see the connection between iron deficiency or a knee injury and psychological stress. The man who said that appears to be just waffling.

 

I read that as him trying to be funny, there was a smiling emoji att the end of the sentence. Not the best time and place for jokes though, I agree!

I don't know what the "a day with the muppets" debacle is? Should I know that?

 

ETA: Re: "Usually used in the UK to describe someone who is incompetent or gormless." I forgot to add that this is also exactly how the term "muppets" ("muppar" in Swedish) is used where I live, in Sweden.

ETA:

Sorry about the emoji getting lost when I copied it from the Facebook app. I didn't notice.

 

I agree with you completely. It doesn't make any sense at all.

 

It doesn't say in the interview if Maroti has treated and tried to recover from his MUS (ie restore his iron levels and the missing cartilage in his knee) through EAET or CBT, and if so whether the treatment was successful or not

 

I'm sure people would love to know how to create iron and cartilage with the power of thought. The world wouldn't need miners for digging up iron ore - they could just teach everyone how to create something out of nothing.

 

It probably goes without saying that neither of those things are symptoms, let alone medically unexplained ones. Perhaps he had symptoms of tiredness, weakness and knee pain. Good news, those symptoms are now medically explained by the results of these investigations (iron levels and knee MRI). If you start calling every disease we don't fully understand "medically unexplained symptoms" you're going to have to include nearly everything, especially cancer and most neurodegenerative diseases.

Which brings us back to one of Jo's elegant comments from a few years ago —

The corollary is that it's not a contradiction.

1. Symptoms are medically unexplained.
2. Symptoms are explained by somatisation.
3. The concept of somatisation is not part of medicine. QED.

 

OMG!! Thanks for taking the time to explain.
Now I understand. (I'm a fan of "The Muppet Show", but I see now how insulting such a comment is coming from him especially)