Psychology Today - CF Patients: More Research Backing You Up

[Cheshire]

This is another article part of the new narrative that seems to be emerging.
It uses the recent results of Georgetown University to quickly describe the new landscape of ME/CFS, (references to the drop of GET in US guidelines, to David Tuller's work and @Tom Kindlon 's review of harm due to CBT/GET, to recent research...). Nice!

For years patients were told to exercise their way out of the problem, building up slowly (“graded exercise”), perhaps with the help of a cognitive behavioral therapist. The theory, dating back to the 1980s, was that they fell out of shape and then became irrationally afraid of exercise, in a bad feedback loop. We all know it can be hard and discouraging when you try to get moving again.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blo...ic-fatigue-patients-more-research-backing-you

And YES the Chronic fatigue title is not that nice...

 

[Valentijn]

Meh. Not bad, but it'd be a lot better if the author had any idea what she was talking about It reads like a school report on a subject the student is completely disinterested in. She does make a few useful points though, and it's good to see PEM sort of mentioned:

The most notable symptom is crashing after a mental or physical stress. You might feel wiped out for hours, days, or weeks, no matter how much you rest — an uncommon symptom in other illnesses.

And any recommendation against GET is worth its weight in gold:

But chronic fatigue syndrome is much worse than feeling out of shape. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention dropped the graded exercise recommendation this summer, under pressure from the chronic fatigue syndrome community. In large surveys, patients reported that even careful exercise programs made them worse.

 

[Hoopoe]

Doesn't Psychology Today have a record of writing poor articles? This seems like a clear improvement.

 

[Cheshire]

Doesn't Psychology Today have a record of writing poor articles? This seems like a clear improvement.

Very uneven.

They publish articles + blogs for which they have no editorial responsabilities.

So they've got nice posts from Tony Bernhard focusing on dealing with ME on a daily basis, one or two papers from Allen Frances criticising the psychologisation of badly understood diseases, ordinary articles by not so well knowledgeable journalists (sometimes good and sometimes less good) and at the same time the ugly blogs from Edward Shorter...

 

[Maria1]

I find the articles (eta in Psychology Today) easy to read, although hit and miss in quality. I find them helpful for explaining things on a very basic level, and I have to say I think this article does well for that.

I also know from my own experience that Psychology Today comes up a lot in google searches when I search for stuff on mental/ emotional health.

I’d be happy if someone who knew nothing about ME/CFS came across this article first, in a psychology magazine, rather than a ‘it’s all in their head’ type article.

Edited for typos

 

[Esther12]

Definitely a good sign if this is the sort of article which is now being written by seemingly non-specialist writers after they search around on the internet.