Psychosocial seminar in Norway May 27-28th 2019

Catosenteret is a rehabilitation center for children and adolescents. They've had a programme for CFS/ME patients since 2006. According to their website they focus on process of change and rely on a bio-psycho-social model for CFS. They are not interested in causes for the fatigue, but consequences of the fatigue and how an ideal situation can be achieved.

Last year they had a conference titled "When the body refuse" with amongst other prof. Wyller and Lillebeth Larun as speakers.

In May they are following up with yet another conference. I don't see ME mentioned in the programme, so I guess they've just decided to prefer to use umbrella term MUPS instead.

Prof. Wyller will talk about persisting fatigue in adolescents after mononucleosis - risk factors and underlying illness mechanisms

A nurse (with a daughter who had ME, took Lightning Process and is now well) will talk about whether there is hope for patients with long lasting, severe fatigue. How does it look from the patient's perspective? A patient story.

Psychiatrist Bjarte Stubhaug (the one with the 4-day mindfullness/CBT treatment for ME) will talk about cognitive behaviour therapy/mindfulness - does such treatment have effect with long term fatigue? Presentation of a new study from Haukeland university hospital.

Other themes are stress, explanatory models for pain, making sense of somatic symptoms, hypnotic techniques for functional disorders, diet etc.

From the introduction:
Title: MUPS in children and adolescents

How can we understand symptom disorders called MUPS, Bodily Distress Disorders and Functional neurobiological symptom illnesses, and what can we do to help these patients?

It is estimated that as many as half of all consultations in primary care is due to these torments and that up to 60% of all consultations in specialist health care is about the same issues (Edwards, Stern, Clarke, Dvbijaro & Kasney, 2010). In addition it is said that it is "A problem that the health care lacks an explanation or treatment satisfactory for people with MUPS" (Fink, Ronsedal, Olesen, 2005).

In cooperation with the Children's ward at Oslo university hospital, the CatoSenteret takes the consequences of "It's not always easy to reach a uniform understand of and cause to the symptoms" (Nunes, Ventura, Encarnacao, Pinto & Santos, 2013). Therefore we arrange for second year in a row a seminar over 2 days about how the health care services can proceed when it comes to these big challenges which requires close cooperation between local health care and the specialist health care, but which also involves school, other educational institutions, sports and other important participants in society.

 

It's dangerous and irresponsible to claim 60 percent of medical consults are about MUS. We probably all know people who were dismissed, perhaps several times, and became increasingly ill, or died from their "MUS". Two come to mind right away: one with chronic abdominal pain who was advised it was stress; finally diagnosed with stomach cancer - died. Another with chronic pelvic pain, died of ovarian cancer.

The medical system safety net has a lot of holes in it. And yet these PS types feel confident that all biological causes have been ruled out, therefore giving them free, unfettered access to "work" with these people.

And, how can we forget that medicine has a history of handing over cases and diseases thought to be psychological, that were later discovered to be biological.