A person-centred test of multidimensional perfectionism and health in people with chronic fatigue syndrome versus healthy controls, 2021, Sirois et al

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Three Chord Monty

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A person-centred test of multidimensional perfectionism and health in people with chronic fatigue syndrome versus healthy controls

Fuschia M. Sirois, Loren Toussaint, Jameson K. Hirsch, Niko Kohls, Martin Offenbacher

Abstract:

Theory and evidence suggests that person-centred models may be especially relevant for elucidating the role of perfectionism in health and well-being in those with chronic health conditions. This may be particularly true for conditions, such as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), in which perfectionism is known to play a prominent role in health outcomes. Yet to date no research has taken a person-centred approach to examine how within-person combinations of perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns are linked to vulnerability for poor health in CFS. The current study compared matched samples of people with CFS and healthy controls (N = 163 each) on measures of stress, depression, and health problems. Consistent with the Stress and Coping Cyclical Amplification Model of Perfectionism in Illness and the tripartite model of perfectionism, within-person combinations of high perfectionistic concerns and strivings had the poorest health profile compared to other within-person combinations, but only among those with CFS. In addition, the perfectionism was indirectly associated with health through stress in those with CFS only. Findings add to a growing evidence base on the utility of person-centred models for understanding the health risks of perfectionism in the context of chronic illness.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S019188692100413X




Doesn't seem to be on Sci-Hub. These people seem to be very interested in perfectionism & all that stuff about maladaptive response & other associated items.

Why can't they just leave us alone.

Here are a few related publications these people have contributed in the past.

Fuschia M. Sirois:
"Perfectionism and maladaptive coping styles in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome and fibromyalgia/arthritis and in healthy controls." (2014)
https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/91790/1/Sirois & Molnar Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy FINAL pub.pdf

Loren Toussaint:
"Implications of forgiveness enhancement in patients with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome"
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20658426/

"A Randomized, Controlled Trial of Wholistic Hybrid Derived From Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing and Emotional Freedom Technique (WHEE) for Self-Treatment of Pain, Depression, and Anxiety in Chronic Pain Patients"
"WHEE?"
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2156587216659400


In addition, Ashok Gupta has him as "Lead Researcher" in his crowdfunding efforts for a NLP study.
https://www.guptaprogram.com/crowdfunding/

Niko Kohls:
"Effectiveness of distant healing for patients with chronic fatigue syndrome: a randomised controlled partially blinded trial (EUHEALS)"
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18277062/

He also apparently sat on the Scientific Advisory Board of the European Rolfing Association. The relevant page is gone, but here's a wayback from last year:
https://web.archive.org/web/2020102...tific-research/scientific-advisory-board-era/

Of course the other two pop up in related areas, doing all sorts of wonderful things with funding. I wouldn't have linked all this other stuff, but I've never heard of any of these people & figured I'd throw it in to this sandwich for context. Typical incestuous tendrils where this one reviewed that one's paper, etc, etc, a group of like-minded colleagues doing real harm who never had the opportunity to work together before. I'm so happy for them.

The perfectionist in me wishes they'd continue working on 'distant healing' by going as far away as possible, where they can all go Rolf themselves (WHEE!).
 
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LOL. I saw it in Google search alerts and decided against posting it, what an absurd waste of time and resources. I frankly can't even make sense of what it is they think they are arguing here. Even many of the words don't even seem to make any sense, what the hell even is a patient-centred model? It's as if a paper shredder had a meeting with a list of "biopsychosocial" buzzwords and this came out of it.

These people make a very strong case to seriously change medical training, no self-respecting expert trained competently would ever waste their time on such nonsense, they are completely lost.
 
"Implications of forgiveness enhancement in patients with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome"

How about implications of health enhancement instead?


I guess in order to recover, I'm supposed to forgive the BPS person who said I have a type A personality, and that's why I have ME.

In my experience, Type A personality used in everyday terms means an aggressive, competitive, a....

Maybe others think being called a Type A person is perfectly nice.

Definition of Type A:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_A_and_Type_B_personality_theory
 
Abstract said:
This may be particularly true for conditions, such as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), which perfectionism is known to play a prominent role in health outcomes
Click to expand...

There's been a shift over time, away from 'people with CFS are all perfectionists' and even 'people with CFS all have perfectionist mothers' to 'people with CFS who are perfectionists are sicker and more depressed than those who aren't'. I guess that's a result of studies finding, despite the hopes of the researchers, that people with CFS, on average, aren't more perfectionist than normal. It's still ok though, as there's still something left for therapists to do, working out who is a perfectionist, and fixing them.

I very much doubt that this paper found that people with CFS are more perfectionist than average - the abstract doesn't say or even imply that, and I'm sure that they would if they could. Their focus is on that newer idea of perfectionism not being a good thing if you have a chronic illness. Which superficially makes sense, given chronic illness means coming to terms with a lot of things in your life not being as perfect as they once were.

But 'perfectionism' means a whole lot of different things, and wanting a good outcome is often a very good thing indeed. And the tools for measuring 'perfectionism' are typically bad.

There's fertile ground for a thesis investigating the idea of perfectionism in the ME/CFS literature.
 
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This from another paper on perfectionism in ME/CFS:
When treated as a unidimensional construct, perfectionism was not consistently associated with depression in people with CFS/ME. However, maladaptive perfectionism, and the composite subscales of doubts about actions and concern over mistakes, were consistently associated with depression in this patient group
Click to expand...
They group the questions that are supposed to identify perfectionism into little categories to create more opportunities for finding something that is different in people with ME/CFS. In that quote that I've given, they have taken the reaching to another level again, and tried to find a relationship between a subcategory of perfectionism and depression in ME/CFS.

Somewhere, we've had some discussion on the subcategories of perfectionism.
 
Here one thread talking about it:
Psychology & Health: Perfectionism and beliefs about emotions in adolescents with chronic fatigue syndrome and their parents (2019) Chalder et al.

The Child and Adolescent Perfectionism Scale (Flett et al., 2016) is a 22-item scale, which measures two factors which are considered to be maladaptive;
  • self-oriented perfectionism (i.e. holding extremely high personal standards and being excessively driven to achieve these), and
  • other-oriented or socially prescribed perfectionism (i.e. believing that others demand extremely high standards of the self).

Chalder 2019 study said:
The groups were not significantly different from each other on the CAPS-self oriented perfectionism scale, nor on the organisation, personal standards, or maladaptive perfectionism subscales of the FMPS (see Table 2). There was a non-significant trend towards a group difference on the CAPS-other oriented perfectionism scale (F 1⁄4 3.60, p= .029); CFS participants scored lower (M1⁄422.6, SD = 8.8) than healthy controls (M1⁄426.0, SD = 8.4), whilst asthma participants were not different from either group
Click to expand...
It looks as though there is another scale (FMPS) that has
  • organisation perfectionism
  • personal standards perfectionism
  • maladaptive perfectionism
So, between multiple scales and categories within the scales, you'd hope you'd find some problem worth fixing. But, in the 2019 Chalder paper, they still couldn't get a result, and had to stoop to talking about a 'non-significant trend'.

Edit - and it turned out that the non-significant trend in the other-oriented type of perfectionism was actually to ME/CFS people rating as less perfectionist than the healthy controls did. Which must really do the BPS people's heads in.
 
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@rvallee was of course right to skip this garbage, but I'll always want to make a note of this sort of thing.

Actually I'm tempted to actually try to put something together, a review, perhaps, of some of the worst, most offensive, insulting, degrading, unethical, incompetent nonsense that's come out as a way of characterizing the illness & those who suffer from it. This one might just make the top 25 worst ever. But it might not, which is saying something.
 
I think that people may be confusing the effects of the illness on ability to do things properly with perfectionism. The decline in ability to do things, the attempts to compensate for this with greater effort, and the frustration could appear like perfectionism.

I notice that I tend to become frustrated with my own performance in various activities of daily life when I'm exhausted. I don't think this should be described as perfectionism. The person experiencing this may be much more aware of their poor performance than of the fact that they are exhausted and unable to function well for this reason.

This is contrary to theories which claim that patients tend to focus excessively on symptoms, their limitations and exaggerate ("catastrophize"). I think that there is a lot of downplaying of symptoms and disability instead, and depicting things more positively than they actually are. This happens for two reasons: because people don't have the capacity to cope with the entirety of their difficult situation and so only allow themselves to see parts of it, and second because people become used living with constant symptoms and limitations which become their new normal.
 
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I don't understand why it is considered useful to compare psychological traits in people with a chronic disabling disease with healthy people.

Surely the 'researchers' must recognise that being chronically sick and being disabled by it has a major impact on everything in our lives including how we perceive ourselves and the coping mechanisms, both physical and mental, we use to deal with life.

So if they want to know if there is something psychological specific to ME they need to use another equally sick and disabled group as comparators. Otherwise all they are finding is stuff related to being ill.

And then of course we have all the usual tricks they play on us of interpreting association as unidirectional causation in a way that suits their prejudices, cherry picking, and claiming results as significant when they are not.

There's no ethics in this sort of stuff. It's prejudice, and the race for publication and promotion. Nothing to do with better understanding or helping people.

I hope the authors are reading this and feeling ashamed of using us for their silly unethical games. We are people like them, not lab rats.
 
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