Invisible Illness A History, from Hysteria to Long Covid, 2026, Mendenhall (book)

From her response about the threshold babble:
The thresholds metaphor helps us think about how people’s sickness emerges and is embodied. In my mind, thresholds are tipping points that occur when the bodymind cannot sustain a level of health due to the multiple insults that have tarnished its strength.
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These insults, or as a Chinese Medicine doctor Brooke Moen called them, “invaders” build upon one another through time and begin to unravel and dysregulate the body. These include viruses, bacteria, stress, trauma, fungi, parasites, foods, chemicals, and other things that manage to enter the bodymind through the mouth, skin, and emotions.
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In some ways, thresholds incorporate concepts from epidemiology and biology such as weathering, allostatic load, and exposomes that suggest cumulative burdens over the life course build upon one another to cause sickness.[1]
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People perceive and experience these threats differently and thus such perceptions and physiological responses can wildly differ and affect people in significant and divergent ways. Mixed and stirred with more material invaders, the bodymind can easily exceed an equilibrium it can easily bounce back to.
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I think it’s fair to say that this is what happens when people with no clue about medicine tries their hand at it. Ugh..
 
I’m reminded yet again of my belief that little good will come from trying to recruit people with a BPS foundation because for them to not cause harm, they would have to unlearn all of their ground truths. That is such a monumental task that it will very rarely be achieved, and it’s guaranteed to be preceded by many mistakes. It’s simply not worth it.

We will have far better outcomes by attempting to recruit neutral people that are scientifically minded. If the BPS folks learn something along the way, that will be a bonus.
 
Utsikt said:
From her response about the threshold babble:




I think it’s fair to say that this is what happens when people with no clue about medicine tries their hand at it. Ugh..
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Psychology provides the tools, but at the core of this is making up narratives about sick people that make sense to the people inventing the narratives. It's the old way of doing things, before science, and it has nothing to do with helping the sick. Those stories are by them, for them. They have nothing to do with us. They're not even about us, they're entirely about this imaginary version of us they prefer to fantasize about.
Utsikt said:
I’m reminded yet again of my belief that little good will come from trying to recruit people with a BPS foundation because for them to not cause harm, they would have to unlearn all of their ground truths. That is such a monumental task that it will very rarely be achieved, and it’s guaranteed to be preceded by many mistakes. It’s simply not worth it.

We will have far better outcomes by attempting to recruit neutral people that are scientifically minded. If the BPS folks learn something along the way, that will be a bonus.
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I agree. It's ironic that in trying this both sides approach, promoters of psychosomatic ideology have made it impossible to leave them any space. They so badly want to nudge psychology into every nook and cranny, always pretending that it deserves its small space in the corner, even though the idea is always to abuse this position and occupy the whole place, and as a result there is simply no future that even allows them in the room. They have been so radical with their methods that it will simply be non-negotiable to leave them any place at all.

The parallels with politics, especially with the extremes, is so loud, ostentatious even, and there the same rules apply: you don't try to get the extremists on board, you simply exclude them from everything and work on the majority/plurality of undecideds. There is literally no point trying in using energy to bring them around, they will never contribute anything anyway, and will continue to push their extremist positions anyway given the chance.
 
Amw66 said:
Excellent substack post on this by Long COVID Advocacy
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That is pretty damning. From what i can gather from the quotes from the book it is the worst sort of humanities-style interference with a medical problem exactly along the BPS lines, presumably wrapped up in a way to superficially appear sympathetic.
 
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Actually, it is a good example of pseudoscience:

" This illustrates that Invisible Illness is not hampered by Mendenhall’s intention and positive wish to help - it is her research lens that is her Achilles heel.

While discussing CFS as largely a psychological problem as opposed to a biological one, Kleinman argued: “One thing I notice as an anthropologist is a very deep mind body split in our discussion. It is as if one must have a real, that is physical reason for having physical complaints…There’s a physiology associated with many social conditions. We must be careful about thinking a condition must be mind or body, it usually is mind and body.” (Mendenhall).
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"

Where have we heard that before?
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the mind-body split beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
 
From her response about the threshold babble:
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tipping points that occur when the bodymind cannot sustain a level of health due to the multiple insults that have tarnished its strength. […] These include viruses, bacteria, stress, trauma, fungi, parasites, foods, chemicals, and other things that manage to enter the bodymind through the mouth, skin, and emotions.
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:rolleyes:

(And aliens! Don't forget aliens and their darned anal probes. Those'll get you in the bodymind every time.)

Often in medicine, thinking in terms of comorbidity or even multi-morbidity are perceived as pushing the envelope.
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Writes somebody who is clearly clueless about medicine.
 
god save us from people with good intentions.

I think the Long Covid Advocacy article is excellent in revealing huge problems with the book, but too kind in attributing good intentions and allyship to Mendenhall. Why commend at all someone who has misused the suffering of sick people to set up a flawed and damaging model that will perpetuate harm to millions?

The comment that no very severely affected people were included in Mendenhall's study shows just how badly she did her research. Her confusion between IBS and IBD is another illustration of poor quality research. She has clearly been captured completey by psychobabble and is clueless about medicine.
 
rvallee said:
There is literally no point trying in using energy to bring them around, they will never contribute anything anyway, and will continue to push their extremist positions anyway given the chance.
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It’s like NASA recruiting flat earthers to build their rockets, instead of engineers.
 
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