"Am I just tired or is it ME?" Press Association article that has been picked up by some UK & Irish media outlets

The largest media outlet that has used it seems to be the Independent newspaper in the UK.

Put the following into a search engine and you should find most or all articles that mention it:
"Dr Anand Patel" "Covid has made ME more"

A version that is freely available is here:
https://www.breakingnews.ie/lifestyle/am-i-just-tired-or-is-it-me-1475549.html

Apologies if it has been discussed elsewhere, I am not up-to-date with this week's news or discussions on the forum.

 

That is spectacularly bad.

Fortunately, the Independent’s readers can be counted on one’s fingers.

 

This is a horrific take for a human being in general, let alone a doctor. It's really kindergarten levels of logic that are missing here. My 4-yo niece and nephew could explain that by definition having significant symptoms would harm you. If I tell them I can't play with them because my body hurts, they understand that I'm harmed. Apparently it's beyond this doctor though.

 

Apropos, I was surprised by the lack of general news coverage of ME awareness day, at least in the UK. It’s an enormous shame that the press packages prepared by advocates failed to land, and that PA chose to pass this one to a teenage scribbler who spoke to a random doctor rather than doing the most basic research.

 

Biggest problems with the article:

• ME claimed to be extreme tiredness. No mention of differentiating symptoms like PEM
  
• Says to talk to your doctor if you might have ME, without mentioning likelihood of being discriminated against
  
• Implies ME causes extreme sleepiness
• Mentions correlated with psychological trauma without balancing by saying almost all diseases are
• Claims that ME doesn't always cause "medical harm", which is both false and linguistic hair-splitting

The only redeeming feature is describing ME in language of physical conditions.

 

That conspiracy theory would need far more than a nonsensical article to support it.

As a bare minimum, you’d need to prove that there are strong links between the commissioning editor and the various bogeymen you suspect of being involved.

There isn’t even much psychologising in the piece, and no handwaving FND neuro-woo. Just an idiotic conflation with TATT.

I don’t think that your reaction is rational. The media’s lack of interest in ME does not mean that it has been nobbled.

 

How things work:
1. Date pops up in Press Association editorial diary of events.
2. PA Editorial farms out "ME Week" to Imogen Brighty-Potts who hasn't a clue about ME, but can bang out 400 words on any old crap and has a trendy health and fitness Dr in her address file.
3. Imy emails Dr Anand Patel who is only to happy to have his media profile enlarged by writing half Imy's article for her. Anand also hasn't a clue about ME but he's well practiced at writing clickbait.
4. After half an hour's work Imy files her copy. PA editoral punts it onto Legal who punt back as 'not dangerous' and Editoral chucks out so called 'article' to the subscriber mailing list - only the Independent is desperate enough to use the copy.

Did I mention that PA once upon a time was a source of some of the finest journalism the world has seen, but is now just a mechanically recovered meat processor.

 

Those are fair questions, although the point about existing articles on file relies on assumptions about workflow and content management that may simply not reflect PA’s operational capabilities: their job is to churn topical pieces out at speed and scale.

But the others are worth asking. Some might best be answered by IBP and some by PA, depending on who posed them. Ideally, it would be the chief executive of one of the ME bodies, although I’d be surprised if they had the time or energy - or even the inclination, considering the dubious content the MEA is happy to promote.

I am firmly of the opinion, though, that lots of things happen in a vacuum. Especially bad journalism, because these days everything is written by youngsters in haste for peanuts and is barely challenged by their editors, who are often equally time-pressed and ignorant. And the person in the street can be assumed to be clueless about ME unless they have direct personal experience - and even then, as likely as not, they have picked up some weird takes on it.

 

All this, except that my guess would be legal is invoked only when there’s editorial concern, rather than being an integral part of workflow.

 

Agree. Any doctor in this day and age who writes an article for the press which equates ME with 'or am I just tired', shockingly and wrongly claims it's "not necessarily something that will cause medical harm", and still relates it to psychological issues in face of the corrected NICE Guidelines, is either a monumentally ignorant buffoon or has cobbled it together to an agenda of disinformation. My guess is the latter, especially as its publication coincides with ME Awareness Day. It's real heartsink stuff.

 

My impression from this is that they whenever they say medical harm they simply mean something they're obligated to act on. Medical harm = have to go to the hospital (or at the very least an urgent appointment to a clinic) where they have to do something because it meets their legal criteria to have to act. Basically, what it means for them by way of obligations.

What it means for the patient they don't have a clue, anything happening outside of clinics and hospitals might as well be happening in a different universe. They don't know about any of that unless they happen to have personal experience of it. But they do know that they are rarely obligated to act in a medical facility, and that's where they do 100% of their day job, which is all they know about his.

I do agree that it's not credible that this isn't propaganda. That they use ME awareness day to spread disinformation is just that extra touch of being absolute jerks.

 

It might be that there are some parallels with how the UK BPS school has approached ME/CFS but I think what we see in the PA article is amuch wider problem, which is the commoditisation of media metastasising the commoditisation of everything the media touches. Medicine is not an easily commoditised product so instead we are given the quickly digested "health and well being" provided to us by the gentle authority of the always immaculate but casually dressed and smiling Dr Patel: Dr Anand Patel and Dr Anand Patel and Dr Anand Patel and Dr Anand Patel and Dr Anand Patel.

Of course Patel is failing as a GP by putting his name to misleading guff about ME/CFS but there's no commoditisation, and so no profit for either the media or its chosen player (Patel), in referencing NICE, or talking about all the unpleasant stuff around illness as opposed to joyfull 'wellness'. PA/Imy Brighty-Potts have crafted a wellness story full of positivity and hope that PA and its subscribing businesses see as a desirable read. A bunch of miserable patienst, stressed medics and struggling researchers is a low value commodity that just isn't going to be preferred to a health and well being shtick. This is something that has yet to be addressed by ME/CFS advocacy, and ME month/week/day inevitably throws it into sharp relief, but IMO it's far more of a long term challenge than than a BPS perspective.

 

Joyful positive wellness, yes, but also inspirational #wellbeing and empathy-signalling #worklifebalance, both of which are rife in fluffy media and on social platforms, and provide hooks on which to hang “fatigue”.

I agree with you massively.