Psychology Today blog platform: "It's All in Your Head - The relationship between contested illnesses and psychiatric illnesses"

It astonishes me this was written in 2019. No mention of ME/CFS biomedical research papers, but Elle magazine is cited. So there's that.

Chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, multiple chemical sensitivities, and chronic Lyme disease are all lumped together as "contested illnesses".

It's All in Your Head
The relationship between contested illnesses and psychiatric illnesses.
Sara Gorman, Ph.D., MPH, and Jack M. Gorman, MD
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/denying-the-grave/201906/its-all-in-your-head

There is a place to leave comments at the end of the article.

Edit: Title changed to show this was a blogger on the blog platform, and not strictly Psychology Today.

 

I wonder if/when the comments will show up

 

@dave30th It might be worth looking at this. The link from the reference in the paper to David Scales makes extensive mention of your work.

 

Isn't this a psychotherapy advertising platform rather than an article?

 

I thought it was a "Critica" advertising platform. That may amount to the same thing.

 

Oh, great. So now if you have a brain tumor, you should be OK with your doctor telling you "it's all in your head," because, you know, that's a technically accurate statement.

People with ME/CFS clearly don't object to the notion that the disease involves "abnormalities in the nervous system and brain." Perhaps the author hasn't been keeping up on current events, but patients' preferred term for the disease is "myalgic encephalomyelitis."

 

Psychology Today has two platforms - a magazine type platform and a platform which provides blogger space to hundreds of therapists and practitioners - often used to generate clients or advertise books. Bloggers are subject to different editorial policies.

This blog is the blog of Sara E. Gorman, PhD, MPH, a public health specialist and Jack M. Gorman, MD, former Professor and Chair of Psychiatry and Professor of Neuroscience at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and on the faculty of Columbia University's Department of Psychiatry for 25 years. He is CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of Franklin Behavioral Health Consultants. He is co-author of Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Facts That Will Save Us (Oxford University Press).

The content of this blog won't have had the editorial oversight of Psychology Today. Its relationship to Psychology Today is the same, for example, as the relationship between Dr Edward Shorter's blog and Psychology Today.

So instead of quoting extracts as "Psychology Today said" - it should be "Gorman and Gorman said".

Allen Frances MD has blogs on this platform (DSM 5 in Distress and Saving Normal) to which I contributed content. Bloggers publish their own content, as you would, for example, on a WordPress blog; once content is published, bloggers retain access to edit, add additional content or remove entire posts; they also screen/moderate the comments and can hold back, delete or close their comments facilities (as Shorter did when it became too hot for him).

Bloggers are expected to maintain certain editorial standards but Psychology Today does not take responsibility for the content of these blogs.

 

Terms of Use

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/terms-use

Extract:

c) You are solely responsible for the content of any posting you make to the Site and any consequences arising from such posting. We assume no responsibility for materials posted by our users or any other actions, conduct or omissions of our users. We act as a service provider for users to distribute and publish their materials. We do not undertake responsibility for screening or monitoring our users’ materials.

d) Our bloggers who post articles to our Site are not employed by us or Sussex Publishers, LLC. Each blogger is solely responsible for the content of his or her articles. Each blogger owns the copyright to the articles they upload. We do not undertake responsibility for screening or monitoring our bloggers’ materials. The opinions expressed by the bloggers are their own and are not our opinions or endorsed by us.

e) Further, we explicitly disclaim any responsibility for the accuracy, content or availability of information found on a site that links to or from the Site (a "third-party site").

 

Might be appropriate to edit the title of this thread to a "A blogger on Psychology Today blog platform:" or similar to clarify this is not an editorial from Psychology Today magazine (which used to have a print edition, too).

 

How to get a blog on Psychology Today:

https://member.psychologytoday.com/...medium=House_Link&utm_campaign=PT_City_Signup

Toni Bernhard has a blog "Turning Straw Into Gold" at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/experts/toni-bernhard-jd

 

I agree. What I think this sort of piece shows (I wouldn't flatter it with the term article or even blog) is that the psychotherapeutic wing of psychiatry, the people who have made ME/CFS their domain, do not understand their own terminology when it comes to psychiatric, psychological, psychosomatic or 'in the head'. So they write anodyne garbage that makes things worse - a bit like a botanist trampling on the endangered orchids he has gone out to document.

My impression is that the underlying problem is that these people have gone in to psychotherapy precisely because they are tone deaf to any valid analysis of cause and effect.

I don't think this is a blog ('a regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style'.) It is part of a sophisticated professional team bonding exercise designed to increase sales for a very large group. Others using the same format may be blogging but this piece is so anodyne it cannot possibly have any function other than marketing. It is just the Gormans waving like Kylie Minogue saying 'hi we're still here and in business'.

 

Again it's this straw-man meme that the thrust of patients' objection is reflexive opposition to psychological/psychiatric classification. Painting objecting patients as mentally-ill ignorant anti-mental-illness bigots. This is all in their minds.

When the actual objection has been to incorrect theories, unhelpful/harmful treatments, and hindrance of other lines of research.

___

And other than that just a bunch of word-garbage.

Particularly the word games with the phrase 'in the head'. Pathetic.

 

I find it hard to understand that the ill-fated consequences for patients with diagnoses being redefined into terms as contested/MUS/BPS/functional disorder isn't obvious to everyone.

 

The article creates stigma by negatively stereotyping patients in various ways.

I agree that patients are definitely not afraid of having a brain condition. I think we are afraid of being labelled as having a psychosomatic condition because then we would be shunted off to Alice in Wonderland medicine, or the medical equivalent of a ghetto, "cared" for by people who seem to be a little crazy or perhaps just very incompetent. It's a bit hard to describe but you get the idea: with this label, patients are suddenly treated very poorly, for example by denying them sensible research, asking them to overlook flaws in published research, asking them to think themselves better, treating them like children, being subjected to what could be described as brainwashing programs, etc. In practice the psychosomatic label seems to indicate that a patient does not deserve to be treated with the same respect and rights as others.

If a psychosomatic label didn't have such negative consequences, people wouldn't resist it. Although it would still only be a label because in reality nobody knows what's causing ME.

 

Precisely. ME is not perpetuated by unhelpful beliefs, and cannot therefore be fixed by changing patients' perceptions of their illness. True no matter where the physiological reason turns out to be, including if it is the brain.

 

Three comments have been posted, including Trish's - but keep an eye on whether any are subsequently taken down.

Gorman and Gorman are in the U.S. Given the time difference between the U.S. and GMT, they may have their blog set to let posts through without pre-moderation. But they will have the option to remove them.

 

Index of Blogs:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/index

 

Wayback Machine is blocked from saving, but I've done my own local save of that article and the three comments.