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Is there much discussion of how the illness could develop in someone who didn't have any of the "predisposing" factors? (Obviously it's moot in BPS practice, because the factors are so broad and common that anybody who ever becomes ill can have at least one assigned to their case history.)

This, and perhaps to address the elephant in the consulting room by including some information for HCPs who still take the psychological view of ME (because that's what they were taught years ago and they've never had occasion to update their knowledge). In as few bullet points as possible: how...

Advice on applying for disability benefits, blue badge, work accommodations etc. How to convey the extent of your limitations with a fluctuating condition in language that a benefits assessor or HR person will understand.

Perhaps because of the unspoken feeling that if a disease isn't real, it's unimportant if the research into it isn't real either - no one's going to make a big name for themselves by pointing out that it's pretend science when the people pretending to do the science already know it's pretend and...

A lot of good stuff in this paper, I think. Especially this paragraph: and I like that they seem to be aware that strategies to counteract cognitive overexertion through pacing, planning, prioritising etc aren't risk-free because they can themselves cause cognitive overexertion.

The Irish Times has a plug for the Perrin technique today. Paywalled, archive link here (hope it works)...

The funny thing is, out of context, "fatigue may arise from a mismatch between what someone thinks they can achieve and what their bodies perform” sounds like it means "people with ME think they can do more than their bodies are actually capable of performing and that's why they're always so tired."

The utter dishonesty of giving ill and exhausted people questionnaires with items like 'I keep wondering why I can't concentrate' and 'I keep thinking that I won't be able to do my job if I can't snap out of this' and then declaring that their answers reflect psychological maladaptations rather...

A cynical person might suspect that this study's primary objective was to provide something to prop up a grant application.

If the client gets better, the method is working; if the client gets worse, they weren't following the method properly. The method cannot fail, it can only be failed.

Which safety measures didn't?

So we have 'PEM' being used as a vague and muddy term for any general post-activity tiredness, understood to be one possible feature of 'post-Covid condition' used as a vague and muddy term for any general post-Covid illness. Getting nowhere fast. But I'm sure the 'commercial fitness and...

It's the 'social contagion' idea again, I think. 'All these people can't really be disabled/neurodivergent/trans, they're just latching onto a trendy "identity" because they want attention/secondary gains/an excuse for their inadequacies...'

'Spoonie' as in 'spoon theory' (metaphor for fluctuating energy-limitations) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory There's plenty of fellow-feeling and overlap between disability communities and trans communities online (both having experience of being socially marginalised and having to...

A writing process where just a few main characters are three-dimensional humans and the rest are cartoon comic figures or monsters can work nicely in children's fiction but doesn't really transfer to the adult world, at least not if you want to feel that you're tackling Deep and Important Social...

Some of it's not bad but it's peppered with over-confident and under-evidenced statements. e.g. that "activity can safely be increased" once you've had several weeks or months of pacing without crashes. Also I wish the factoid about Long Covid having "200 symptoms" would go away. I think it...

This is one of the top stories on the BBC News website just now: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gpz163vg2o Steven Bartlett sharing harmful health misinformation in Diary of CEO podcast

At least it wasn't AI-generated; ChatGPT would have put a random number in rather than a placeholder.

- and if not now, when? The time has never been so ripe to achieve some change, with awareness at such a (relative) high, and a current momentum of media attention that will not last forever. But they're still going "Careful, don't frighten the horses" when the horses are already all running...

Saw it on Mastodon https://biologists.social/@biorxiv_neursci/113628238034821270 and it sparked half a memory of someone commenting on here about the need to take sex into account in studies (sorry, can't remember who that was). Happy for the thread to be deleted if you think it's not worth...