Maeve Boothby O'Neill - articles about her life, death and inquest

[Binkie4]

Sunday Times online today ( bolding and print size from the article- front page online- article in Health).​

An extended description of the circumstances around Maeve's death, including discussion of FII.

​

"As my daughter died of ME, the state met in secret to blame me​

Maeve Boothby O’Neill’s mother had no idea she was being accused in private of causing or fabricating the illness that would take her life aged 27"​

"Sarah Boothby had no idea that at the same time as she begged for help for her daughter, the people she was turning to were holding secret safeguarding meetings, discussing the possibility that Maeve’s condition was in fact caused or fabricated by her — and proposing Maeve’s forcible removal from her care."


"Boothby and Maeve’s father, the Times journalist Sean O’Neill, knew from bitter experience that there was scant medical support available for ME. But they could not understand why it was so hard to get their daughter the help she needed for a more bearable death.

It was only when council documents were disclosed before Maeve’s inquest last year that they finally got answers. "

"Safeguarding records for the final year of Maeve’s life show social workers, nurses and a mental health assessor, instead of focusing on managing Maeve’s ME, were investigating concerns about Boothby. That year there were seven safeguarding meetings that neither Maeve, nor her parents, were invited to."( my bolding)


"Boothby spaced out visits to her daughter by other people, including social workers and relatives, to prevent her from getting exhausted, and refused an unplanned visit from social workers in lockdown after they “doorstepped me just as I was taking food in for her”. The action triggered an investigation for “coercive control”."

"Boothby, 64, contacted The Sunday Times after an investigation last month found that hundreds of parents, mostly mothers, are being falsely accused of fabricating or inducing their child’s illness, and facing allegations of abuse when they seek medical care for them."

Boothby recognised her own experience in the article. The ME Association says parents of children with ME or long Covid are “a sitting duck” for allegations of “fabricated or induced illness” (FII, of which FDIA is the most extreme example) because the condition is so poorly understood and it is challenging to get a diagnosis."

"Boothby said the lack of medical knowledge about ME combines with risk-averse social work to terrible effect. “It’s like the whole thing is built to kill people.”

Now she wishes she had never gone to them because she believes the extra stress of interventions prompted by safeguarding concerns worsened Maeve’s condition.

Adrian Harris, chief medical officer at the Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Maeve’s case was an extremely complex and tragic one, and our deepest sympathies are with her family for their loss. Everybody involved in caring for Maeve has been profoundly impacted.

“We remain committed to learning from Maeve’s case, and we are working to support the national plan published last month.”





This is just the beginning of a very long article which moves into the issue of FII in some details. It describes, with photos, more of Maeve's life, and Sarah's since Maeve's death.
It also gives more information from Maeve's GP who, it will be remembered, had supported Maeve, but was too ill herself to attend the inquest, and quotes Dr Speight.

Speight said: “Parents of children with ME try desperately to get someone to see them to diagnose them, they go from doctor to doctor … They’re trying to do the best for their children, they’re not neglecting them, and they’re not emotionally abusing them. But because of the extended definition of FII, they end up on the child protection register. Simply disagreeing with doctors is taken as neglect. And usually the parents are right and the doctors are wrong.”





The discussion includes a statement from NHS England.

"A spokesman for NHS England said: “The NHS is determined to improve the experiences of people with ME/chronic fatigue syndrome. NHS England is working closely with the government to implement the national plan published last month to improve knowledge and transform care for patients — and has already rolled out new training to increase understanding of the condition among clinical staff."

 

[Maat]

Sunday Times online today ( bolding and print size from the article- front page online- article in Health).​

An extended description of the circumstances around Maeve's death, including discussion of FII.

​

"As my daughter died of ME, the state met in secret to blame me​

Maeve Boothby O’Neill’s mother had no idea she was being accused in private of causing or fabricating the illness that would take her life aged 27"​

"Sarah Boothby had no idea that at the same time as she begged for help for her daughter, the people she was turning to were holding secret safeguarding meetings, discussing the possibility that Maeve’s condition was in fact caused or fabricated by her — and proposing Maeve’s forcible removal from her care."


"Boothby and Maeve’s father, the Times journalist Sean O’Neill, knew from bitter experience that there was scant medical support available for ME. But they could not understand why it was so hard to get their daughter the help she needed for a more bearable death.

It was only when council documents were disclosed before Maeve’s inquest last year that they finally got answers. "

"Safeguarding records for the final year of Maeve’s life show social workers, nurses and a mental health assessor, instead of focusing on managing Maeve’s ME, were investigating concerns about Boothby. That year there were seven safeguarding meetings that neither Maeve, nor her parents, were invited to."( my bolding)


"Boothby spaced out visits to her daughter by other people, including social workers and relatives, to prevent her from getting exhausted, and refused an unplanned visit from social workers in lockdown after they “doorstepped me just as I was taking food in for her”. The action triggered an investigation for “coercive control”."

"Boothby, 64, contacted The Sunday Times after an investigation last month found that hundreds of parents, mostly mothers, are being falsely accused of fabricating or inducing their child’s illness, and facing allegations of abuse when they seek medical care for them."

Boothby recognised her own experience in the article. The ME Association says parents of children with ME or long Covid are “a sitting duck” for allegations of “fabricated or induced illness” (FII, of which FDIA is the most extreme example) because the condition is so poorly understood and it is challenging to get a diagnosis."

"Boothby said the lack of medical knowledge about ME combines with risk-averse social work to terrible effect. “It’s like the whole thing is built to kill people.”

Now she wishes she had never gone to them because she believes the extra stress of interventions prompted by safeguarding concerns worsened Maeve’s condition.

Adrian Harris, chief medical officer at the Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Maeve’s case was an extremely complex and tragic one, and our deepest sympathies are with her family for their loss. Everybody involved in caring for Maeve has been profoundly impacted.

“We remain committed to learning from Maeve’s case, and we are working to support the national plan published last month.”





This is just the beginning of a very long article which moves into the issue of FII in some details. It describes, with photos, more of Maeve's life, and Sarah's since Maeve's death.
It also gives more information from Maeve's GP who, it will be remembered, had supported Maeve, but was too ill herself to attend the inquest, and quotes Dr Speight.

Speight said: “Parents of children with ME try desperately to get someone to see them to diagnose them, they go from doctor to doctor … They’re trying to do the best for their children, they’re not neglecting them, and they’re not emotionally abusing them. But because of the extended definition of FII, they end up on the child protection register. Simply disagreeing with doctors is taken as neglect. And usually the parents are right and the doctors are wrong.”





The discussion includes a statement from NHS England.

"A spokesman for NHS England said: “The NHS is determined to improve the experiences of people with ME/chronic fatigue syndrome. NHS England is working closely with the government to implement the national plan published last month to improve knowledge and transform care for patients — and has already rolled out new training to increase understanding of the condition among clinical staff."

The pain is keeping me awake so thought I'd catch up with the media on DecodeME and this is the first thing I saw! WTF!

I'm so out of date with the detail of what's going on with the cyp in this area. Can anyone direct me to a link to the investigation referred to in the article please, or is it another investigative article being referred to - I can't access the full article?

Initial research - 10 mins - unearthed this in the British Journal of Social Workers first published 7 March 2022 (5 months after Maeve's death) and in the BJSW in their October 2022 edition.

Fiona Gullon-Scott, Cathie Long, FII and Perplexing Presentations: What is the Evidence Base for and against Current Guidelines, and What are the Implications for Social Services?, The British Journal of Social Work, Volume 52, Issue 7, October 2022, Pages 4040–4056, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcac037

Abstract​

Fabricated or induced illness (FII) and perplexing presentations (PPs) are the terms used by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) in the UK. FII is presented as if synonymous with Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a rare presentation which is now known in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition as factitious disorder imposed on another (FDIoA). However, FII is not a diagnosis, and the definition is far broader than FDIoA. RCPCH admit that there is a limited evidence base for the prevalence, specificity or sensitivity of FII and the associated ‘alerting signs’, and yet local authorities across the UK have Child Protection Policies developed directly from the RCPCH guidelines. An increasing number of families of children with neurodevelopmental presentations (such as autism), or presentations of complex or less well-known conditions such as Ehlers–Danlos syndrome, are finding themselves being investigated for FII by Social Services, and consequently labelled as potential ‘perpetrators’ of child abuse, on the basis of FII guidelines. The present article discusses the issues relating to FII and PP, how current guidelines are creating implicit and explicit bias against certain kinds of families and the implications for Social Services.

Multi-agency safeguarding partnership arrangements require strong leadership to ensure the effective protection of children, and their actions must be accountable to scrutiny (HM Government, 2008, pp. 73–74). However, recent reports have raised concerns relating to child protection processes, indicating, for example, that current practice with regard to families with disabled children (including autism) is institutionalising parent carer blame (Clements and Aiello, 2021),

The 'intention to deceive' MUST be present in order to be able to assert FDIoA (which I note was the old MHbP)

Current diagnostic practice in DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) now outlines FDIoA, a psychiatric condition in which a person falsifies or induces physiological or psychological symptoms in another (usually a child) with the intention to deceive, and where there is no alternative mental health explanation for their behaviour.

However, note this regarding the RCPCH 2021 Guideline

A recent paper by Davis et al. (2019) cites literature searches for MSbP in their outline of FII epidemiology, treating the two as effectively the same thing and acknowledging that there is little empirical literature for FII. The RCPCH guidelines on FII published in 2021 state that FII, MSbP and FDIoA are terms which ‘essentially refer to the same entity’ (RCPCH, 2021, p. 10), and yet in the same document FII is also presented as distinct from FDIoA, with FII not requiring intention to deceive (RCPCH, 2021, p. 10), and not being a diagnosis. There is therefore a somewhat inconsistent presentation of FII both as synonymous with MSbP and FDIoA, yet simultaneously distinct from several of the core features, and outside formal diagnostic manuals.

Confusion reigned, but the RCPCH went ahead and created their 2021 Guideline.

Literature outlines the lack of clarity and agreement as to exactly what FII is (Lazenbatt, 2013; Davis et al., 2019), stating for example ‘The varied terminology currently used reflects uncertainty as to whether the definition should focus on parental behaviour or motivation, or on the harm to the child’ (Davis et al., 2019, p. 111) and ‘The growing body of literature on FII reflects the lack of clarity amongst professionals as to what constitutes FII’ (Lazenbatt, 2013, p. 61).

Despite the lack of professional consensus, the RCPCH has published new guidelines around FII, which incorporate ‘PP’ as a precursor to FII (RCPCH, 2021).

'Perplexing Presentations' (PP) as a precursor to FII - the killer blow for parents and/or carers of pwME - suggested by Glaser and Davis in 2019, which appears to have basically informed the majority of the 2021 RCPCH Guideline. [Crawley still a member and active at the time, we were still waiting for the MAGENTA trial results at the time. Didn't that start around 2019? Bath and Bristol again!]

Glaser and Davis (2019) describe PP as ‘where a child is reported to have symptoms or disabilities that impact significantly on their everyday functioning and yet thorough medical evaluation has not revealed an adequate and realistic medical explanation’ (p. 7). They suggest that PP may progress to FII, and that early intervention ‘may reduce the potential for iatrogenic harm … and may reduce the need for safeguarding interventions’ (Glaser and Davis, 2019, p. 7). Thus, there is the addition of further untested constructs in the form of PP, with these being presented as the early stages of what could become FII if professionals do not intervene.

I can't read the entire paper, nor have I read the RCPCH 2021 Guideline, or Glaser and Davis' 2019 paper upon which so much of this particular shitshow seems to have been based, but that's enough to be getting on with. I'm sure Maeve's parents and others will be able to dissect the rest of it which I'm sure they already know about anyway. Of special note is that the RCPCH 2021 Guideline was published in January 2021. NICE Guideline 2021 was published 18 January 2021.

It's more of exactly the same institutional abuse resulting from a complete lack of gold standard evidence based practice and policies suffered by pwME and their carers for decades. I'll add it to the complaint to the PHSO regarding the DHSC Final Delivery Plan.

Glaser and Davis (2019) outline a number of ‘alerting signs’ and detail a number of responses that professionals should make when faced with these signs. These alerting signs and the concept of PP in relation to FII, coupled with RCPCH guidelines, have been the basis of many Local Authority Social Care policies. The authors go on to state ‘While the alerting signs have been widely disseminated, they have not been tested prospectively for specificity and sensitivity’ (p. 10), and in reference to the proposed management of PP and FII state ‘the extent to which this can prevent harm to children, or progression to more damaging FII, remains untested systematically’ (p. 10).

These two statements should raise substantial concern amongst professionals, since evidence-based practice and policies are the ‘gold-standard’ for medicine and social work, and yet what Glaser and Davis (2019) are stating is that they have published and circulated alerting signs and proposed interventions despite there being no research conducted to establish whether these alerting signs really do accurately identify those at risk for FII, and despite no systematic assessment as to whether the proposed interventions have any success in reducing child abuse.

I'm so very sorry that Maeve and her parents had to endure this. I can't imagine the additional trauma this would have induced while they were grieving.

There MUST be effective accountability, apology and immediate meaningful change so that yet another generation of pwME are not institutionally abused. I've completely had enough.

Going back to bed as pain relief has kicked in.

 

[Chandelier]

Maeve‘s mother was interviewed on the LBC phone-in show hosted by Natasha Devon from yesterday.


AI transcript:

We’re joined now by Sarah Boothby who’s a campaigner on ME and chronic fatigue. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. Sarah, first of all, would you mind telling us how you came to be a campaigner on this issue?
Sarah Boothby: That’s a great question, Natasha, because I honestly did not think of myself as a campaigner. It’s kind of I’ve been pushed into it because I’m not somebody who, firstly injustice has always motivated me to act anyway. And secondly, having seen what I’ve seen so close and so personal, I can’t just ignore it now. You know, my daughter died from medical neglect of ME and I’m a qualified social worker, so I know that the laws in our country are designed to protect patients like Maeve.
With ME, it does not work. It does not work. For me, that is a perfect example of what injustice looks like. Here we are a free speech country and we create all of these laws. We vote for people who create these laws for us and then suddenly if you’ve got a diagnosis of ME or chronic fatigue syndrome, they don’t work for you. I want an explanation, please. So that’s how I became a campaigner.
Natasha Devon: When you say that that the system is just not fit for purpose and it doesn’t acknowledge people with a diagnosis of ME or chronic fatigue syndrome, what do you mean by that? What is not there that should be there to support them?
Sarah Boothby: I think the root of this is that ME is not chronic fatigue syndrome. It never was. And to confuse the two is a disservice to both sets of patients. Chronic fatigue syndrome is a term that was invented by psychiatry to give itself a kind of legitimacy that it doesn’t have now. ME was a condition already in existence. It’s only because patients speak up for themselves that there’s any kind of recognition because there’s never been research done into it as a biomedical condition, which is why it’s an exciting time.
But it’s a pre-print, so I’m expecting the people who have to defend themselves with chronic fatigue syndrome will be pushing back on this. That’s not such a bad thing. It’s how good science works and it’s how good laws are made. But when people are dying and those people take no responsibility for those deaths and pretend they’re not actually happening, and the entire British medical establishment is implicated in this, then there’s something really rotten at the heart of it.
Natasha Devon: When you say that ME and chronic fatigue syndrome are not the same thing, can you clarify that a bit? Are we saying that they are distinct conditions, one of which is psychological and the other one is neurological?
Sarah Boothby: No. And it’s difficult to define because there is no biomarker for either condition. But I worked for a long time in specialist mental health services and I saw a lot of people who had severe and enduring mental health conditions. Many of them had CFS in the long list of diagnoses. Those patients deserve as much of a service as anybody else.
The defining characteristic of ME is something called post-exertional malaise.
Natasha Devon: I would say that it would be taking a really long time to recover after doing exercise or exerting yourself.
Sarah Boothby: Okay. And when you think of exertion, what would you include in that?
Natasha Devon: I would say maybe going to the gym or going for a run.
Sarah Boothby: Fantastic. People with ME, if they do that, which is what everybody knows is good to keep you healthy, they will make themselves more unwell. And nobody knows but them what that’s actually like. There’s something like 200 different symptoms in ME. From the point of view of the GP, you’ve got this person coming in saying, “Every time I go to the gym, I feel X, Y, or Zed.” And the GP is going, “I keep seeing this person… they look perfectly okay to me.” Maybe they’ve got hypochondria. There’s no biomarker. There’s no test.
Until we get the biomarker that demonstrates PEM is real… and in the early stages of ME when it’s mild, there can be quite a long delay between the activity and the symptom onset. With Maeve, my own daughter, she had a mild infection at 12. By 13, she was writing in her diary about feeling tired all the time. By 26, she was unable to move a muscle. Everything had to be done for her. She couldn’t sit up, she couldn’t chew. I was caring for her completely single-handed 24 hours a day, even when she was in hospital because the nurses did not have the time to feed her. The doctors didn’t know what was wrong. For them, the risk of tube feeding her was higher than the risk of allowing her to starve to death, which is absolutely staggering.

 

[Lou B Lou]

The pain is keeping me awake so thought I'd catch up with the media on DecodeME and this is the first thing I saw! WTF!

I'm so out of date with the detail of what's going on with the cyp in this area. Can anyone direct me to a link to the investigation referred to in the article please, or is it another investigative article being referred to - I can't access the full article?

Initial research - 10 mins - unearthed this in the British Journal of Social Workers first published 7 March 2022 (5 months after Maeve's death) and in the BJSW in their October 2022 edition.

Fiona Gullon-Scott, Cathie Long, FII and Perplexing Presentations: What is the Evidence Base for and against Current Guidelines, and What are the Implications for Social Services?, The British Journal of Social Work, Volume 52, Issue 7, October 2022, Pages 4040–4056, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcac037







The 'intention to deceive' MUST be present in order to be able to assert FDIoA (which I note was the old MHbP)


However, note this regarding the RCPCH 2021 Guideline



Confusion reigned, but the RCPCH went ahead and created their 2021 Guideline.


'Perplexing Presentations' (PP) as a precursor to FII - the killer blow for parents and/or carers of pwME - suggested by Glaser and Davis in 2019, which appears to have basically informed the majority of the 2021 RCPCH Guideline. [Crawley still a member and active at the time, we were still waiting for the MAGENTA trial results at the time. Didn't that start around 2019? Bath and Bristol again!]



I can't read the entire paper, nor have I read the RCPCH 2021 Guideline, or Glaser and Davis' 2019 paper upon which so much of this particular shitshow seems to have been based, but that's enough to be getting on with. I'm sure Maeve's parents and others will be able to dissect the rest of it which I'm sure they already know about anyway. Of special note is that the RCPCH 2021 Guideline was published in January 2021. NICE Guideline 2021 was published 18 January 2021.

It's more of exactly the same institutional abuse resulting from a complete lack of gold standard evidence based practice and policies suffered by pwME and their carers for decades. I'll add it to the complaint to the PHSO regarding the DHSC Final Delivery Plan.



I'm so very sorry that Maeve and her parents had to endure this. I can't imagine the additional trauma this would have induced while they were grieving.

There MUST be effective accountability, apology and immediate meaningful change so that yet another generation of pwME are not institutionally abused. I've completely had enough.

Going back to bed as pain relief has kicked in.

@Maat

Todays Times article - 'As my daughter died of ME, the state met in secret to blame me'
Accessible archive Link

https://archive.ph/liHFG

The long Times article of 19/7/2025
'We demanded help for our sick children. We were accused of abuse
Some of society’s most vulnerable are being torn from their families by officials who claim their parents are fabricating illness'

Accessible Archive Link:

https://archive.ph/PHQvo

'New research shows that FII [Fabricated or Induced Illness] has been substantiated only in four serious case reviews since 2010 and caused no deaths. Yet a snapshot survey by the University of Leeds in 2023 found that almost 400 families reported having been accused of FII.'

.

 

[Amw66]

If you read the Isla Kidd threads and listen to the File on 4 embedded link you see the effects

This has gone on for years, but has been made significantly worse by the 2021 revision

Everything, including family court , is secretive.

Tymes Trust have been literally the saviour for many.

@Tilly may be worth messaging as she has years of experience supporting families ( always mums) in this situation

 

[Sean]

The discussion includes a statement from NHS England.

"A spokesman for NHS England said: “The NHS is determined to improve the experiences of people with ME/chronic fatigue syndrome. NHS England is working closely with the government to implement the national plan published last month to improve knowledge and transform care for patients — and has already rolled out new training to increase understanding of the condition among clinical staff."

And yet the threat of these accusations and their appalling real world consequences continues on to this day.

Their words are hollow, insulting, and cruel. And utterly gutless.

It is beyond dispute that the profession, in cahoots with government, is completely incapable of facing up to the savagery they have so recklessly spawned and unleashed upon society, and ending it.

Is UK medicine really so devoid of basic human decency?

 

[Amw66]

And yet the threat of these accusations and their appalling real world consequences continues on to this day.

Their words are hollow, insulting, and cruel. And utterly gutless.

It is beyond dispute that the profession, in cahoots with government, is completely incapable of facing up to the savagery they have so recklessly spawned and unleashed upon society, and ending it.

Is UK medicine really so devoid of basic human decency?

Yes

 

[Peter T]

Thank you @Maat for collating the information on FII (fabricated or induced illness), I had not realised how much of a mess the information and official guidelines are. When you have a health service that on the ground refuses to believe very severe ME/CFS could possibly exist along side such inadequate information it is perhaps less surprising that so many patients and their families are subjected to what amounts to abuse by those who should be there to help them. However none of this makes the nightmare of false accusations any easier to endure and does nothing to ensure that potentially fatal medical mismanagement does not happen,

It is a shame that Sarah Boothby, otherwise such an important advocate, got side tracked into distinguishing between ME and CFS when the meaningful distinction is between ME/CFS and the symptom of chronic fatigue.

 

[Binkie4]

For the record, long article about Maeve is on page 14 of the Sunday Times print copy, centre of the page. Large photo of Sarah Boothby at Maeve's grave with full length photo of Maeve superimposed.
Headline " As Maeve lay dying in pain, they were pointing the finger at me."

One or two points
1. In the ME world, we are more familiar with FII and parents being accused of harming their children.
2. Maeve was an adult which didn't protect Sarah from accusations of FDIA, factitious disorder imposed on another, which the Sunday Times describes as the most extreme form of FII.


Sarah wants social workers and clinicians to be aware " how traumatic that safeguarding process is. And if you add trauma into ME, you will make all of those patients worse." Utterly horrific for any family already facing severe trauma in caring for an ME patient to face this. On top of medical mismanagement, we have community mental health social workers compounding the problem. I don't understand why this was not examined further at the inquest although since the family did not know of these concerns, they could not bring it up. I don't remember the seven safeguarding meetings in the last year of Maeve's life being referred to or those staff giving evidence.

The Times/Sunday Times is doing all it can to keep the focus on this case, and all that went wrong.

Now off to bed.....

 

[Maat]

@Maat

Todays Times article - 'As my daughter died of ME, the state met in secret to blame me'
Accessible archive Link

https://archive.ph/liHFG

The long Times article of 19/7/2025
'We demanded help for our sick children. We were accused of abuse
Some of society’s most vulnerable are being torn from their families by officials who claim their parents are fabricating illness'

Accessible Archive Link:

https://archive.ph/PHQvo

'New research shows that FII [Fabricated or Induced Illness] has been substantiated only in four serious case reviews since 2010 and caused no deaths. Yet a snapshot survey by the University of Leeds in 2023 found that almost 400 families reported having been accused of FII.'

.

Thanks very much.

This has gone on for years, but has been made significantly worse by the 2021 revision

Yes, Sophia Mirza and her mother went through something similar in 2003, and goodness knows how many before or since.

And yet the threat of these accusations and their appalling real world consequences continues on to this day.

This has left me actually speechless.

 

[Lou B Lou]

The ME gaslighting, sexist, denigratory, and at times downright malicious, ME disease-denier brigade is energetically out in the Times comments today. Always the same fatuous, or frankly false, arguments. The same names disparaging ME and urging depriving ME of funding and services, framing ME as psychiatric, or just undeserving ('the NHS just can't afford ME'), and justifying mistreatment/abuse of the patients, in the Comments to Every ME Article in The Times, year after year.

Their framing of ME and the patients is pure BPS.
Sometimes they look very much like a lobby,
.

 

[Ariel]

The ME gaslighting, sexist, denigratory, and at times downright malicious, ME disease-denier brigade is energetically out in the Times comments today. Always the same fatuous, or frankly false, arguments. The same names disparaging ME and urging depriving ME of funding and services, framing ME as psychiatric, or just undeserving (the NHS just can't afford ME), and justifying mistreatment/abuse of the patients, in the comments to Every ME Article, year after year.

Their framing of ME and the patients is pure BPS.
Sometimes they look very much like a lobby,

Are these real people or just people with vested interests in the situation? I can't decide if these comments should be moderated or left up so people can see what we are up against.

 

[Lou B Lou]

Are these real people or just people with vested interests in the situation? I can't decide if these comments should be moderated or left up so people can see what we are up against.

In order to Comment under Times articles it is necessary to have a paid subscription and use the Commenter name the payment is under. Though The Times offers subscription deals which can be repeated (deals such as subscription for £1 a month for 4 months). So Commenters must be paying subscribers.

 

[Maat]

The ME gaslighting, sexist, denigratory, and at times malicious, ME disease-denier brigade is energetically out in the Times comments today. Always the same fatuous, or frankly false, arguments. The same names disparaging ME and urging depriving ME of funding and services, framing ME as psychiatric, or just undeserving (the NHS just can't afford ME), in the comments to Every ME Article, year after year. Sometimes they look very much like a lobby,

I can't see the comments, but I can imagine. Sounds like panic. They need to be careful they don't make themselves extremely tired...

 

[BrightCandle]

Their framing of ME and the patients is pure BPS.

Realistically its just PS, they do nothing about the biological aspect. Its just Pyschosocial and it would be a more honest take on what they are doing.

 

[Yann04]

Realistically its just PS, they do nothing about the biological aspect. Its just Pyschosocial and it would be a more honest take on what they are doing.

Nah, i’d keep the B, remove the P. I think BS is a more accurate descriptor.

 

[rvallee]

"A spokesman for NHS England said: “The NHS is determined to improve the experiences of people with ME/chronic fatigue syndrome. NHS England is working closely with the government to implement the national plan published last month to improve knowledge and transform care for patients — and has already rolled out new training to increase understanding of the condition among clinical staff."

I don't believe what you say, because I've seen what you do, and even what you plan to do, and it's all the same BS and lies.

This is not surprising, and it makes a total mockery of the inquiry and the hospital's and health care services lies about not being guided in their decisions by an obsession with seeing Maeve as a nut case.

Which all makes a total mockery of the very system of prevention of future deaths and any accountability for this system, because it literally cannot function if the people responsible for wrongdoing can simply lie about what they did and why. This is exactly what a cover-up looks like, not that there was much doubt about it. There should be perjury penalties for doing this, and obviously there won't be, because it's a cover-up.

 

[Sean]

Sometimes they look very much like a lobby,

And behave very much like a cult.