Mental health research in the media: recommendations for a new function at the Science Media Centre (2010) Bithell

The science media centre has played an important role in stigmatising CFS patients, and anyone critical of PACE and related work, so it's always interesting to look at how they present themselves.

Someone sent me this old report recently, and while it's not that interesting or relevant to us, I thought I'd post up my notes on it:

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/...-Centre-mental-health-consultation-report.pdf

The intro talks about the important role Til Wykes played in setting up the role of a mental health specialist at the SMC. When the tribunal ordered the release of PACE data, Wykes was alongside Sharpe and Moss-Morris at the SMC's 'CBT – does it really work?' talk where they addressed questions like "What about issues like placebos and double-blind RCTs – does it matter if we don’t have the same level of rigour as for drugs?" [no sceptics invited]:

http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/cbt-does-it-really-work/

Maybe, if journalists don't have time to properly investigate a story, they should just not write about it, rather than farm it out to an untrustworthy organisation like the SMC?

There's been a push to change this, but the MH research charities I've seen seem completely thoughtless, and happy to channel money to poor quality research.

Wessely comments:

Luckily, the SMC found a way to evade discussions involving troublesome patient groups:

Concern about the poor reputation of psychiatry, and the desire to improve it:

The SMC claims this with regard to different views from psychology and psychiatry:

Guess who came to fill this role?:

They love to seize an opportunity:

Looks like the author of this report, and the first Head of Mental Health at the SMC had "chonic fatigue" from 16-19, and wishes she had access to the FITNET trial Crawley was hyping.

"I wish this treatment was around for Chronic Fatigue when I had it at 16 to 19 - the brilliant Esther Crawley Bristol Uni on @BBCr4today CFS"



Simon Wessely liked her tweet.

 

On one hand they do want to hype bran scanning as proof of evidence based psychiatry but on the other they will be worried that they cant just be pronounces of subjective nonsense allowing them to own as many as possible conditions with their gods presiding over them with voodoo and quackery.

They love to be incontrol of the "in between" areas of medicine which would no longer be so once they have diagnostic tests and the understanding of the mechanisms.

They lose control of things like MS etc when scanning improves to show neurological damage instead of themselves owning such conditions with "weak mind" interconnected mind body nonsense.