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Intelligence is negatively associated with the number of functional somatic symptoms, 2009, Kingma et al

Discussion in 'Psychosomatic research - ME/CFS and Long Covid' started by Grigor, Jun 26, 2020.

  1. Grigor

    Grigor Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    I just stumbled on a conversation on LinkedIn with professor in psychosomatic medicine Judith Rosmalen where she states that MUS is more common in people with low intelligence. (see screenshot)

    https://bit.ly/38611iK

    She apparently studied the subject and I would love to know what you guys think about the study!



    Thank you!
     

    Attached Files:

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  2. Hoopoe

    Hoopoe Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Personally I think belief in psychogenic causation of illness is a sign of low intelligence. One need only read the stuff these people publish. It's full of flawed reasoning, contradictions and errors. You've got to be pretty dumb to believe in this stuff, or else you would notice all these problems.

    There is such a big problem with the assumption that unexplained means psychogenic and these people apparently think it's perfectly logical and good reasoning.
     
  3. Daisymay

    Daisymay Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Wonderful response!
     
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  4. Invisible Woman

    Invisible Woman Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    *Snorts derisively*

    In summary -
    We have decided to judge these people for absolutely no reason other than the fact that society lets us. Now we're getting away with treating them like second class citizens let's add insult to injury. Literally.

    That or it's a bet. Just how much stupidity can we as research display, how much casual cruelty can we inflict before someone puts a stop to it.
     
  5. Hoopoe

    Hoopoe Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    It's plausible that there is a genuine correlation of this kind (eg. being unable to function also means having fewer and worse opportunities to develop one's intelligence, or certain illnesses like POTS could cause brain fog which could affect performance in intelligence tests that were designed to be used in healthy populations).

    Such a correlation could be interpreted in many different ways. Usually the psychogenic theorists are only interested in interpretations that justify the belief that unexplained symptoms aren't a failure by the doctor to diagnose the disease but a failure of the patient.

    Research into presumed psychogenic conditions has big problems with failure to exclude reverse causality.
     
    Last edited: Jun 26, 2020
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  6. rvallee

    rvallee Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    If I'm seeing right, the cognitive tests are done in the patient population, not from pre-illness tests. So basically they find that people with chronic illness who complain of significant cognitive symptoms show less intelligence than healthy people who have no significant cognitive symptoms.

    So this is actually a confirmation of significant impairment, twisted around to insult a population of tens of millions as being stupid. It is self-evident that people who complaint of cognitive impairment will be cognitively impaired in relevant evaluations, as long as the evaluations are smarter than "is this a giraffe?". And yet this impairment is rejected, which creates an awkward situation, resolved by simply assuming we must have always been stupid and saying it out loud, adding insult to insult to injury.

    I will leave the intellectual exercise of decoding the following acronyms to the author: GFY. And another one for good measure: GTFOH.

    As echoed in other comments, belief in conversion disorder is itself a sure sign of foolishness. Intelligence without wisdom is just as incompetent as far below average intelligence, finding brand new smart ways to be dumb.
     
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  7. Invisible Woman

    Invisible Woman Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    True. If someone developed a condition like POTS prior to having the chance to develop one's intelligence or prove that level via career achievements.

    How does one then explain the doctors, engineers, scientists and lawyers who develop these same conditions?
     
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  8. Trish

    Trish Moderator Staff Member

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    The print is too small for me to read, so I've copied the abstract here:

    Intelligence is negatively associated with the number
    of functional somatic symptoms

    E M Kingma, L M Tak, M Huisman, J G M Rosmalen

    ABSTRACT

    Background: Functional somatic symptoms (FSS), that
    is, symptoms that cannot be conclusively explained by
    organic pathology, have a poorly understood aetiology.
    Intelligence was studied as a risk factor for FSS. It was
    hypothesised that intelligence is negatively associated
    with the number of FSS. To investigate the specific role of
    intelligence in FSS as opposed to medically explained
    symptoms (MES), the association of intelligence with FSS
    was compared with that of intelligence with MES. It was
    also hypothesised that lifestyle factors and socioeconomic
    factors mediate the relationship between intelligence and
    both FSS and MES, whereas psychological distress is
    especially important for FSS.

    Methods: All analyses were performed in a longitudinal
    study with two measurement waves in a general
    population cohort of 947 participants (age 33–79 years,
    47.9% male). The Generalized Aptitude-Test Battery was
    used to derive an index for general intelligence, and the
    somatisation section of the Composite International
    Diagnostic Interview was used to measure the number of
    FSS and MES.

    Results: General intelligence was significantly associated
    with the number of FSS. The association of intelligence
    and FSS but not MES was mediated by work situation:
    participants of lower intelligence who reported more FSS
    were more often (unwanted) economically inactive. No
    evidence was found for a mediating role of psychological
    distress in the association of intelligence with FSS, even
    though distress was an important predictor of FSS.

    Conclusion: Intelligence is negatively associated with
    the number of FSS in the general population. Part of the
    association of intelligence with FSS is explained by a more
    unfavourable work situation for adults of lower intelli-
    gence.
     
  9. Hoopoe

    Hoopoe Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Research that is about correlations between responses to questionnaires and the like seems to usually be of very low value. Go do some real research.
     
    Last edited: Jun 26, 2020
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  10. Simbindi

    Simbindi Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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  11. Hoopoe

    Hoopoe Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    The psychogenic theorists seem to lack the intelligence to understand that the constant publications of articles that are biased towards finding negative psychological or behavioural traits in certain patient groups causes profound harm. The combined effect of thousands of papers like this being published every year is that of an intense propaganda campaign against a vulnerable group. As thought experiment, ask yourself if racist message campaigns against ethnic minorities at such a scale were socially acceptable. Clearly not.

    Things don't have to be this way. They could also choose to respect patients. Doctors and patients could get along without conflict.
     
    Last edited: Jun 26, 2020
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  12. TiredSam

    TiredSam Committee Member

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    Professor of psychosomatic medicine calls patients stupid. What are the chances? Just call them muppets why don't you?
     
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  13. dave30th

    dave30th Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Yes but isn't this an association? It could be reading of this stuff constantly is the cause of the low intelligence rather than the other way around? it's hard to tell what a continual diet of this research could do to a healthy mind.
     
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  14. Grigor

    Grigor Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    We ME patients should extra be careful...
     
  15. Hoopoe

    Hoopoe Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    I also have the suspicion there is a dynamic where teachers tell their students a lot of made up bullshit about the wonders of psychosomatic illness. The students then grow into academics themselves and find that fraud is rampant, and to have a career, they have to make up bullshit about psychosomatic illness. They then teach this to the next generation. And so the cycles continues since the times of Freud.

    In a sense these academics are also victims of this ideology. They're expected to deliver results which is impossible because psychosomatic medicine is bullshit and does not work, and so they either quit or make stuff up.

    Making stuff up in psychosomatic medicine has become so normal that outcome switching, intentionally avoiding controlling for placebo effects and so is not considered a cause of concern.
     
    Last edited: Jun 29, 2020
  16. Grigor

    Grigor Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    This seems to be a key point but I'm a little puzzled by what they are trying to say.
     
  17. Esther12

    Esther12 Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    There's this old thread on a 2013 paper from Rosmalen, White, etc: https://forums.phoenixrising.me/thr...ldhood-cognitive-ability-and-somatic-s.26753/

    They thought less bright children would be more likely to end up with CFS, and found:

    I wonder if they'd consider a similarly sized finding to be just chance if it had supported their hypothesis? I'm not sure I remember having ever read a paper where a significant finding in support of the researchers hypothesis was suggested to be a matter of chance.
     
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  18. Grigor

    Grigor Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    The fact that they even thought that...although with White you expect anything I guess.

    I'll have to read through that study as well. Crazy!
     
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  19. Peter Trewhitt

    Peter Trewhitt Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    I believe, though without concrete data, that my own intelligence is inversely related to the number of symptoms associated with my ME.

    Having two psychology degrees, a further clinical qualification and some twenty years experience working with people with neurological conditions I could argue I have some standing in making a profession judgement on this issue.

    At the onset of my ME I carried a regional clinical specialism and successfully managed a team of six clinicians. My department also had a research output that a comparably sized University department would not have been ashamed of. Simultaneously I was training to be yoga teacher. Over the nearly thirty years of my ME, I went from having mild CFS/ME to being largely bed-bound. As my condition has deteriorated I have acquired additional symptoms, including food intolerances, IBS, orthostatic intolerance, chostochondritis and more. At the same time I have gone from being able to sustain an intellectually demanding job, including participation in regional and national policy forums, regularly reading five or six books a week, both fact and fiction, managing staff undertaking research projects and undertaking higher degrees, to being unable to work, to having not been able to read an entire book in five years and requiring assistance to set up an on line grocery account and manage my daily life.

    So I accept it is a definite possibility that ‘intelligence is negatively associated with the number of [so called] functional somatic symptoms’. My personal experience would support that. However this association in my case would much more rationally be explained by having an ongoing condition involving neurological factors that caused both the ‘somatic’ symptoms and the intellectual deterioration. Such an association between intelligence and the number of symptoms could be seen as strong evidence against the condition being functional, somatic or psychosomatic, rather support for the conclusion that Prof Rosmalen and the cited study profoundly misunderstanding their clinical grouping.
     
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  20. Grigor

    Grigor Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Very interesting.

    They did mention this in the study:

     
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