UK Times:'What if the thing that’s making you physically ill is your mind?', Feb 2020, Rumbelow [includes ME]

Done

 

They say a third of GP visits are due to conversion disorder (AKA somatization), even though they discourage the term psychosomatic. Where is their evidence for this? They are saying anything that's unexplained must be in the mind. This is not a rational belief, it's based on faith not evidence.

How can so many medical professionals fall for this?

 

It took me probably over half a dozen visits over a year or 3, at least 3 of which involved a hospital blood test, to get a simple diagnosis of type 2 diabetes - and even then I had to do buy my own BG test meter and take it and do a test in the surgery in front of her before she would do a test using hers.

At no point prior to this had she bothered - it was just either send me for a blood test (with no mention that it was supposed to be a morning fasted test) or tell me that it had already been tested so I didn't have diabetes, even though I stank of it.

All those previous visits would have been 'unexplained'.

When it was finally 'diagnosed' my BG level was over 25 mmol on a good day, on a bad day it was unreadable by the meter (i.e. off the scale).

The whole 'unexplained' thing assumes that the GP is actually competent.

 

Modern medicine has only been around about 100 years. How can they be so arrogant as to think all diseases have been discovered making it possible to rule out physical causes?

What about the 100's if not 1000's of conditions we are yet to discover? What about in a 100 years time or even a 1000 years time when so many currently unexplained disease will be discovered?

 

wait, what did Hawking think the moon was made of anyway?

 

Definitely not cheese, at any rate.

 

Wasn't there a suggestion recently that Stephen Hawking had a psychosomatic disease?

 

Agreed. I would also love to know how they can be so blind or stupid not to see that colluding with this crap will ultimately lead to the perception that fewer GPs are needed, rather than simply taking some burden off busy GPs. Many of the young GPs starting out might find their job disappears in the coming decades. Replaced by someone with a few weeks training.

Edit - typo. But while I'm here - ditto for clinical psychologists - they'll ultimately be replaced too. They won't even be needed to train the barely trained IAPT personnel because the existing ones will train the new ones.

 

It could be motivated reasoning; if you want to believe something, you'll find or accept reasons to believe it.
Or we could go with the same quality of logic used with regard to the notion of "30% somaticization": Those who propound this position are clearly practicing witchcraft, and their disciples are making 1/3 of the patients sick to satisfy their evil master. They are instructed to handle the other 2/3rds normally to provide cover. Prove it wrong ;-).

 

Anthony David is co-author of this from 2017, my bolding.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(17)30036-6/fulltext

Also co-author of this editorial from 2010 in the BMJ

Paywall, https://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c738.full
Sci hub, https://sci-hub.se/10.1136/bmj.c738

And co-author with Simon Wessely of this letter to the Lancet from 1996.

Paywall, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(05)65451-7/fulltext
Sci hub, https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/S0140-6736(05)65451-7

Above are simply examples of his published views on FND and ME, not a complete list.

 

From what I remember going through various googles over time this gent was actually part of the small collective (inc Wessely) from the early days, seems right in there, and hasn't been as quiet and out of it as we might think - more one of the more subtle with his profile (my gut says because he was thinking along the lines of the new FND angle to take whilst Sharpe/Wessely etc were spending a loud few years going to the newspapers claiming patients were trolling them etc.

Although this from 1993 - in the BMJ (Vol. 307, Issue 6905 title 'wide-eyed and legless') doing something similar-sounding in response to a screenplay on someone with ME (he mentions the 'rumour' of the incident where the boy with ME was thrown into a swimming pool) - well..: https://www.bmj.com/content/307/6905/688

He was one of the authors on "The Legend Of Camelford : Medical Consequences Of A Water Pollution Accident": https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1995-45677-001


and was part of the 1998 working group in the following: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/RP98-107/RP98-107.pdf

was co-author on the following 2009 paper on chronic fatigue in primary care attenders: https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour...re-attenders/3EC02BD72C28B4CB4F09EA471EA4969B

 

just reminds me of the naughty using of the phrase 'what if' - basically the science or political equivalent of a caveat/load of smallprint saying you aren't responsible for your own assertions.

But you are correct - this question alone, including your part, should very much be the one that anyone claiming to be 'for the patients' is able to answer, properly. Not pretend intentions, or using the defensive distraction of pretending that calling out something that is done which causes harm is someone inferring intentions but basic pathwaying of what is going on. To however many conditions or people with conditions not yet with a name but certainly with a need (that might be defined as certain skillsets/research) this issue stretches to.

perhaps we should point those in charge of funding and education towards the following types of pages that most sectors/industries would use:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...analysis-22bffa5f-e891-4acc-bf7a-e4645c446fb4

before heading to newspaper articles.

Or at least simple risk-impact analyses

Might be complicated by the fact it would require the different department of entry to be used in the pathway chart - and their different approaches - but I think this sort of thing, and the long-term costs from getting it wrong (not just in short term money/budget etc) could do with being charted out by things associated with the APPG etc along with who gets what money and how money when you loop to certain defaults.

Is this not more accurate than assuming this based on whichever storytelling versions get put into books or articles?