Jonathan Edwards
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Are the good ones, using CBT as a support and adjustment therapy, doing so on the quiet? Are they doing so knowing it isn't actually what the guidelines mean and want to keep their heads down in case someone notices and demands they inflict the toxic kind?
As I understand it this isn't CBT. CBT is defined as a treatment that aims to alter thoughts or beliefs and there by change behaviour. I don't really think there is such a thing as coping CBT. It is just counselling and explaining and moral support. Someone on our table expressed surprise that a patient should discriminate between coping and belief changing CBT. It seems pretty clear that a lot of the health professionals involved in ME/CFS care don't really have much idea what BPS CBT is, or even what CBT is. Wesley said to me he was worried this was the case.
Which is all the more reason to be absolutely clear that whatever help patients are given it is not under the heading of CBT. Exactly the same applies to GET. There seemed to be general agreement amongst the health professionals that they did not in fact use GET but activity management. So the BPS labels are being used to rubber stamp what may be mostly common sense approaches. It would be much better to admit that these are just common sense approaches and that since they are not what was studies in PACE etc, PACE etc. are irrelevant.