A frustrating opinion piece in the Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen today by psychiatrist Einar Kringlen. He's an old school psychiatrist who has rejected ME for decades. The article is paywalled, so here's a summary:
He claims ME are among many diagnoses that isn't listed in ICD-10 or DSM-III. He then writes about
repetitive strain injury, an "epidemic" in Australia in the 1980's which turned to be nothing after all and caused by media attention.
Then he goes on to ridicule fibromyalgia by pointing to the debate about how many tender points should be required for a diagnosis.
Neurasthenia disappeared as a diagnosis in the 1980's, but patients with tiredness and other diffuse symptoms still needed a diagnosis. The name CFS appeared in USA, even though the CDC has yet to find any somatic causes to the symptoms.
He refers to the Royal Free Hospital outbreak saying that 300 were afflicted with light concentration problems, dizziness and tiredness."Anxiety for polio which at that time was a feared disease, was probably the cause to this epidemic among the nurses". The diagnosis given was ME, because "200 nurses could not get the diagnosis conversion hysteria".
He then says nothing has been detected in ME patients after years of thorough examinations, no sign of inflammation in the brain.
He says that "The British psychiatrist Simon Wessely, threatened on his life by members of the ME Association there" has been talked about negatively by the professors Saugstad/Rønning, despite him being one of the foremost researchers in the field.
He says all doctors know of patients who have experienced small trauma or conflicts complaining about short term headache, pain, tiredness or concentration problems. Some may go to the doctor and end up with an ME diagnosis, which is then written about in the media. Then others with similar symptoms find out that they have this illness, and then the epidemic is on. An epidemic doctors have contributed to create.
Some will claim that ME must be somatic because ME-patients lie themselves down in dark rooms for long periods of time. Firstly, there are likely not many people who stay put in a dark room for a long time, and secondly people can get blind and paralysed or get cramps similar to epilepsy from psychological causes. To lie down in a dark room then you have heard of other ME patients doing it, is not strange.
He ends with: Many doctors see it as meaningless the growing numbers of patients with these diagnosis, but they obviously dare not say what they think, because they'll immediately be branded as ignorant and heartless in the media. When will the ME diagnosis disappear - in ten years?
Hvor lenge vil ME bestå?
