ME/CFS in UK medical textbooks (Psychiatry)

I have been going through my old books from the loft and came across one on Psychiatry (bought at the time I was deciding on whether to go for an autism diagnostic assessment, rather than to look up what it contained on M.E.).

So for the first time, before putting it aside on my 'to sell' pile, I made the mistake of seeing if it says anything on M.E. Well, it does - under the chapter 'Medically Unexplained Symptoms'. The chapter is 8 pages in total, and the content on 'CFS/ME' is half a page. Since the text book is nearly 500 pages in total, I am assuming it is fine to reproduce the 3 paragraphs on M.E. on the forum for discussion.

The textbook is the fourth edition of 'Psychiatry' by John Geddes, Jonathan Price and Rebecca McKnight with Michael Gelder and Richard Mayou, published in 2012 by Oxford University Press.

 

Have you considered burning it?

Literally none of these points apply to me.

 

Wonder if that's the same Jonathan Price who did Cochrane's CFS reviews?

 

This guy:

https://www.neuroscience.ox.ac.uk/research-directory/jonathan-price

Looking through his list of publications, it appears so.

 

Its a pity they do not use degradable paper. Otherwise it could be in pride of place on a little shelf in the lavatory. Unfortunately most paper today will just clog the plumbing.

 

What's concerning is that this is the material that is being fed to (UK) medical students.

Following the links from J Price's web page, I came across the following (2016) articles in the journal 'Medicine' - the first on 'Medically Unexplained Symptoms' by Price, immediately followed by an article on 'CFS' by another author, one of whom was on the 2007 CFS/ME NICE guideline committee:

https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.medicinejournal.co.uk/article/S1357-3039(16)30195-5/fulltext

https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.medicinejournal.co.uk/article/S1357-3039(16)30198-0/fulltext

https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.medicinejournal.co.uk/article/S1357-3039(16)30207-9/fulltext

This is how the journal 'Medicine' markets itself:

 

Well spotted @Simbindi
I haven't the heart to read those 3 articles, but I agree its very disturbing that this is what they're being taught.

oh that did make me laugh I really needed that this morning. thank you

 

This is like the poster child of "it's better to keep your mouth shut and appear ignorant than open it and remove all doubt". Well, there's basically a whole orphanage system of those poster children but this is one of them anyway.

"I don't know" is OK. It is the default. It should always be the default. There is no situation that is improved by rejecting "I don't know" and choosing to make stuff up instead.

Great job giving solid ammunition to luddites and anti-science folks. There will not be a legitimate defense to trust in experts when this tripe is given legitimacy and official blessing. How can there be an eventual defense of the credibility of psychiatry when this all blows up? It will be wrong but a natural position to basically distrust everything, and it will be hard to blame those pushing this.

 

Doctors are definitely too quick to diagnose sometimes or to assume psychological causes, however I think a diagnosis that says they don't know what is wrong is also likely to lead to disbelief of sufferers and make it impossible to take sick leave or claim disability so I don't know what the solution is really.

 

NOS, not otherwise specified, is an open diagnosis, and comes in many flavours. I do know some ME patients have accepted a diagnosis of depression just to get disability benefits though.

 

Carefully omitting enteroviruses despite epidemics of enteroviral infection being the basis for the name myalgic encephalomyelitis. Never let it be known this illness came in epidemics because that is proof that they do not have psychological causation.

 

It should not be forgotten that the cause of epidemics was "mass hysteria". .. Allegedly.