The Netherlands: Paediatrician Elise van de Putte

Post copied from News from The Netherlands

Posted by @Grigor on Twitter,
"OMFG! CBT/GET promoter Elise van de Putte. Author of the Dutch PACE-trial called FITNET admits that she harmed about 30 to 40 % of the patients with "#CFS". Obviously this is a huge underestimation & she's still promoting CBT/GET eventhough it goes against scientific advances..."

[Google translated]

"Elise van de Putte (66) is a pediatrician, specialized in social pediatrics. She studies how children's health is influenced by family, school and society, and she also treats children at the Wilhelmina Children's Hospital of the UMC Utrecht. She is a professor there. She is about to retire and over a glass of ginger tea in a Utrecht café she talks about what she has seen changes in her profession over all these years. And how she herself has changed.

The conversation starts with her PhD research, twenty years ago, into chronic fatigue in adolescents, a syndrome that was first described in the US in the late 1980s and was also increasingly seen in the Netherlands. Children, mostly girls, who are too tired to go to school and spend all day on the couch. They have headaches, stomach aches and muscle pain, and a treatable cause cannot be found. Elise van de Putte then noticed that the parents themselves often had health complaints – tiredness, pain, depression, anxiety – and one of her conclusions was that the children grew up in an environment in which being tired and having pain were part of it. It is a complex interaction of predisposition, vulnerability and environment.

She already knew then that it did not help to tell children with chronic fatigue to get off the couch - you are not sick, you can go to school - and she was fully committed to behavioral therapy: learning to think differently about what you feel and what your body can handle. Learn to do differently. And now, twenty years later, Elise van de Putte knows that that does not help in 30 to 40 percent of cases. “I see girls from back then who never got better. They think it is their own fault, because I told you that they could contribute to the solution themselves?” Yes, she minds. She thinks, perhaps, she has only made those girls even more unhappy."

https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2023/12/1...ren-worden-geweldig-onder-druk-gezet-a4184273

 

Thanks. I'll post my response here as well. It's quite something that she admits the emotional harm her work caused. Unfortunately she only says that it doesn't work for some, but fails to mention that many have deteriorated due to her treatments. She keeps promoting CBT as if nothing has happened, so her stance on CBT hasn't really changed I think. Maybe she's now clearer to the kids that it doesn't work, but harm is still not properly communicated?

https://www.facebook.com/1000615116...6RE9MYNTQ8Ko8LseV1FJDR8mWrgoCB2NAVM9MvggAfZl/

This is a survey with kids who have ME:

Survey children Support for Appropriate Care Offer (OPaZ) program of the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport.

CBT N=24 :

- 54% of the youngsters were not satisfied with this treatment because it actually deteriorated them.

- 1 patiënt considered it the most traumatic experience ever.

- 38% had een neutrale opinion about CBT.
Only 8% were satisfied

GET N=11:

- 89% dissatisfied, caused deterioration.

https://www.regelhulp.nl/complexe-z.../opaz/rapporten/1/eindrapport-onbegrepen-ziek