The Sydney Morning Herald: Hope for people with mysterious and debilitating tick bite symptoms

My bold and a huge sigh

Hope for people with mysterious and debilitating tick bite symptoms

The Morrison government has committed $3 million for two studies over five years that will investigate the nature, prevalence and causes of these symptoms to demystify the problem and develop tests and treatment for adults and children with DSCATT (debilitating symptom complexes attributed to ticks).

...

A second grant has been awarded to University of Melbourne researcher and psychiatrist at Austin Hospital Professor Richard Kanaan to develop a treatment for DSCATT.

The therapies will be adapted from existing techniques that have treated conditions with similar mysterious causes, notably chronic fatigue syndrome.

Though there have been serious concerns raised about the evidence showing cognitive behavioural therapy is an effective treatment for chronic fatigue syndrome.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1081703242793250818

 

The interest of Richard Kanaan appears to be conversion disorder.

So the treatment will probably involve reattribution of symptoms, that is, trying to convince patients that the symptoms have nothing to do with biology or a previous tick bite but are just expression of some psychological conflict. That's going to shut the patients up and the problem is then solved, for the healthcare system at least.

I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.

PS: he has published with Wessely.

 

And of course, Kanaan has links to Kings and Wessley as you can see from a quick look at his publication history. Patients here are, quite rightly, furious that they have to put up with yet more pseudo-scientific nonsense (not to mention the waste of taxpayer funds).

EDIT: @strategist beat me to it!

 

What a bunch of reprobates. And a waste of money! Unbelievable.

 

I don't think I'm losing my marbles! I recall the article claiming that CBT is an effective treatment for chronic fatigue syndrome, not that there have been serious concerns raised about it being an effective treatment. The twitter link confirms this.

It seems the volley of tweets, and I would like to think emails like the one I fired off immediately, caused the writer (medical editor at the SMH and experienced health reporter) to rephrase the sentence.

 

I've just seen that Kanaan (and Austin Health) are recruiting for a trial of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to treat Australian patients with tick-borne illnesses.

He apparently is conducting multiple rounds of screening interviews prior to recruitment to ensure that any prospective participants are on board with talking therapies as the sole form of treatment. It seems as though the BPS industry is taking lessons from the Lightning Process.

Word is that they're struggling to even find 10 patients willing to sign up.


ETA: apparently he was given $1.1million of taxpayers' money for this nonsense.