Opinion Why inflammatory reductionism is a threat to psychiatry and the rest of medicine, 2024, Pollak

Utsikt said:
Title:
Why the threat of psychosocial reductionism to patients in psychiatry and medicine is rather ignored
Click to expand...
Very good letter. Makes some very solid (although all of them old from our perspective) points:
Far from it. One cannot hold that position as long as medicine itself has been instrumental in afflicting and negating patient harm in these groups. Apparently it remains lost on most colleagues that it is perverse to use a group’s suffering to make a point it has been suffering from to begin with.

Unsurprisingly, it is precisely this doctrine that formed the basis for so much stigma and a lack of biomedical research in ME/CFS, something millions of LC patients had to learn about the hard way. Associating them with a piece that suggests that people falsely claim an ‘epidemic of brain inflammation’ leading to ‘a tsunami of misdiagnoses’ – while this is factually being ignored in LC and ME/CFS – is just painful.
Click to expand...
Really just dishing out wisdom to fools, but the fools are wedded to their folly and so it will fall on deaf ears:
It would simply be a sign of self-reflection – and helpful to patients – if health professionals would acknowledge their negation has come at the cost of them. But in a world of conflicting interests things rarely are simple. For now the pandemic seems to have had the opposite effect: the professionals that claim to be the most biopsychosocially informed, seem the least interested in acknowledging iatrogenic harm, even if it occurs at a global scale.
Click to expand...
It's so obvious that the obsession with psychosomatic explanations is simply a matter of preference, of wanting reality to work one way that is perceived as more desirable. They're considered more desirable models because they are perceived as easier to deal with. Which is delusional, neither medicine nor psychology has managed to produce a single useful bit of information that improves outcomes, but it's what the perception is, that psychological problems can be conquered with the smart application of magic rituals, uh, I mean using the right words and gestures. Same difference.

I will never understand why that is, why this delusional fantasy is considered easier to deal with than reality, even after decades of failure have proved otherwise. Escapism is really its own goal, it's just not supposed to apply in professional settings. And yet here it doesn't just dominate, it's all there is. It is supreme. And being in a state of permanent failure, it is supreme failure, the highest, or lowest, possible level of failure. No other group of professionals have ever failed worse than this in all of human history. Just as hard, likely. Harder? Not possible. This is truly the maximum level of failure.
 
rvallee said:
No other group of professionals have ever failed worse than this in all of human history. Just as hard, likely. Harder? Not possible. This is truly the maximum level of failure.
Click to expand...
There are so many professions that have failed at so many things throughout history. We simply have no basis to claim that psychosomatic medicine is the (shared) worst failure. And I’m hesitant to compare levels of suffering or failure at all.

I don’t think it’s productive either, because the claim will become an easy target for the opposition.

Nor is it necessary. The level of suffering caused by psychosomatic reductionism is way past any reasonable ethical or moral thresholds to warrant a substantial response.

As for why barely anyone tries to do something about it - I believe two factors are important, although there obviously are many more:
  1. It doesn’t concern them directly
  2. It’s too uncomfortable to face the reality
 
Nightsong said:
Tom Molmans' letter to the editor:

Link | PDF
Click to expand...
Good letter pointing out important problems such as straw man and inversion of issues and claiming things in the name of ‘reducing stigma’ when they were the creator of said stigma

but I guess in the language needed to get through to others in said area?

importantly there is the question towards the end of why did you drag me/cfs into this at all ? If it was apparently about inflamed brain
Ie the switch and bait of another Trojan horse for propaganda against an already very badly bombarded and iatrogenicslly harmed group (that they can’t help kicking for the sake of it in psychosomatic medicine, just cos they can/are allowed to)

it’s interesting to see someone else sees through all of this as being as transparent as it is (the untackled misbehaviour of a certain group just because everyone thinks it’s too difficult to bother and as long as they stay in their corner of ‘just’ making me/cfs lives trashed and miserable it seems people think it’s best to leave ‘em where they are because at least they are identifiable?)
 
Utsikt said:
There are so many professions that have failed at so many things throughout history. We simply have no basis to claim that psychosomatic medicine is the (shared) worst failure. And I’m hesitant to compare levels of suffering or failure at all.

I don’t think it’s productive either, because the claim will become an easy target for the opposition.

Nor is it necessary. The level of suffering caused by psychosomatic reductionism is way past any reasonable ethical or moral thresholds to warrant a substantial response.

As for why barely anyone tries to do something about it - I believe two factors are important, although there obviously are many more:
  1. It doesn’t concern them directly
  2. It’s too uncomfortable to face the reality
Click to expand...
3. The people behind it and their likely reaction not being at a similar level to the norm in the profession so people I guess at all levels, not just patients, are warned that anything other than agreement that effectively sponsors them to carry on is seen as a personal attack to be remembered forever/making someone an enemy. You get this in normal life of course in personality type but there is more variation in the power they have (and if they can be dealt with eg by HR or big boss or police or lawyer etc if it’s a non work or whatnot)

I think the important part of course is the speaking to hangers on/their audience to at least limit the ear their propaganda gets and how persuaded it is without pointing out the issues and fallacies.

which I can see has to be done carefully without stepping on landlines where they retort withbsophism by picking out one line they don’t like or claiming dualism - so this seems well done in being aware of all that, but it must have been exhausting due to all the tip toeing bps make us do due to all those tricks
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom