A new clinical challenge: supporting patients coping with the long-term effects of COVID-19 2022 Goldberg et al

ABSTRACT

Mental Health Practitioners (MHPs) have a unique opportunity to provide resources and support to those suffering from Long COVID (LC), the post infectious illness that often follows an acute SARS-CoV-2 infection. In working with these individuals, MHPs can learn from the experiences of patients with another post-infectious disease known as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). ME/CFS was once thought to be a psychologically mediated disorder caused by deconditioning and the fear of exertion following a precipitating event such as a viral infection. Research now shows that LC and ME/CFS are biomedical, multisystem, complex physiologic diseases. This article provides a framework to MHPs for the treatment of LC patients using knowledge derived from three decades of research on ME/CFS.

Open access, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21641846.2022.2128576

 

Pretty good and accurate overall in terms of background and descriptions. I still don't see what this has to do with mental health professionals other than that the medical profession is negligent and there is simply no way to change that. What is described here is mostly accounting for the gaslighting and neglect of medicine by providing what is basically alternative medicine and mostly describes things the patients find out for themselves immediately, usually countered by bad advice from physicians. Which is basically the current path anyway, as it depends on training that is not only non-existent, but just as wrong as what physicians are taught.

There's no need for validation if there's no gaslighting. This is said so often, most people are so shocked at the first instance of medical gaslighting, they never think they have to do so much work for it only to end up being dismissed anyway. It's so clearly broken and dysfunctional. And it's beyond clear that if it weren't for the neglect and gaslighting, most people are surprisingly resilient and able to cope with hardship and massive loss, even through insults and willful neglect.

So basically:

1. Patients are sick and figure stuff out
2. Go see doctors about stuff (e.g. exertion makes symptoms so much worse), gaslighted/given bad advice
3. Referred to mental health professionals to hear stuff they figured out in step 1 and helping with the dereliction of duty in step 2

It basically makes the assumption that this flaw in medicine is impossible to correct, so it's kind of a "how to live with your abuser" approach instead. Or "how to live in a flooded house", published by the government body in charge of disaster assistance, because they are keeping out of this particular disaster.

It's good in itself, but is clearly part of a system so broken that the people who actually want to help can't even think of the system as amenable to working as intended, and pretty much prescribe another broken system that is just as impossible to change, features even more of the bad ideas that break things here, and is the current system anyway, just described in a way that still wouldn't change outcomes for patients even if it were true, and clearly is not.

Aside from lacking actual treatments and basic knowledge of the issue, everything recommended is standard medical care, as basic as it gets. All this does is continue to offload the problem to the wrong people, on the off chance that they do slightly better at it, which we know is not happening any time soon.

Good intentions and lateral moves leaving us in the same place.

 

(authors list includes leonard jason and nina muirhead)

doesnt help (in the UK) when the main NHS site does not mention PEM and instead it says
"Exercising usually makes the symptoms worse. Sometimes the effect is delayed and you'll feel very tired a few hours after you've exercised, or even the next day."

 

Rock solid article. This is the kind of research we need to see. The paper presents ME and LC as inexorably linked and certainly biological. It gives good advice to mental health professionals for helping clients live with either condition. In short, it's the good kind of psychosocial research.

 

Great paper. This all seems like obvious stuff to us, but this type of guidance for MHP is still very much needed. Well done to the authors!

 

A very important point. I believed my ME symptoms were just a strange presentation of my mental conditions for years.