Association between child maltreatment and central sensitivity syndromes: a systematic review protocol, 2019, Chandan et al

This next applies in a number of threads, as well as here:

From How Doctors Think, (pub. 2007 - ISBN-13/EAN:978-0-547-05364-6 (pbk.) by Dr. Jerome Groopman, M.D.

From the book cover: "Jerome Groopman explores the forces and thought processes behind the decisions doctors make."
"...Jerome Groopman, M.D., holds the Dina and Raphael Recanati Chair of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and is chief of experimental medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical center in Boston. A staff writer of The New Yorker, he is the author of The Anatomy of Hope, Second Opinions, The Measure of Our days, and other books."

Early in his book, Dr. Groopman tells the story of Anne Dodge who suffered with undetected Celiac Disease for 15 years. For much of that time she had been treated as if she had a psychological condition, but was slowly dying of malnutrition, according to the author. Medical advice appeared to have worsened this woman's condition; to counteract her severe weight loss, she was instructed to eat 3,000 calories per day, including a substantial amount of bread and pasta.

Finally, one specialist put aside his assumptions, and other's diagnoses of a mental health disorder, and tested this woman for Celiac. A positive diagnosis for this started her on a journey back to health.

I haven't finished the book, but a few passages about some physicians' attitudes to mental health disorders are relevant to the ME community.

Page 36: "The effects of a doctor's inner feelings on his thinking get short shrift in medical training and in research on decision-making." " ' Most people assume that medical decision-making is an objective and rational process, free from the intrusion of emotion,"...Yet the opposite is true."

Page 39: In reference to the patient called Anne Dodge, the author describes what the specialist had to do to correctly diagnose Ms. Dodge:

" Falchuk had to avoid the negative feelings that physicians have for patients labeled as 'psychiatric", seeing such people as neurotic, cloying, deranged, and generally delusional, a burden because they do not tell the truth, their physical complaints not worth taking seriously because their symptoms originate not in the chest or bowels or bones but in the mind. A wealth of research shows that patients thought to have a psychological disorder get short shrift from internists and surgeons and gynecologists. As a result, their physical maladies are often never diagnosed or the diagnosis is delayed. The doctor's negative feelings cloud his thinking." (emphasis added)

Supporters of the psychosocial theory of ME ("cfs") have said that our community should accept a diagnosis of mental illness. I can't recall if they have said there is no shame in this diagnosis. On the one hand they seem to convey this more positive view, no shame in having a mental illness, while on the other, some in this group have maligned the character of those with ME. Clearly, from the above information, there are those in the medical profession who view persons with mental health issues in a negative light. We know from lived experience that conflating the physical disease ME with mental illness has had a very detrimental effect on the medical profession's view of our character.

ETA:

Page 290 of How Doctors Think, cites research about physicians' attitudes to patients with psychological diagnoses including "Liking in the physician-patient relationship", by Judith Hall and Debra Roter, and "Taking care of the hateful patient", by J.E. Groves.

 

Anyone ever research how living through mistreatment as a child, may actually equip that person to better cope with ME, if they unfortunately acquire it? Not that mistreating children is a parenting style recommendation; not at all. Some parents believe that mistreatment for children "toughens them up" for the real world. Not something I endorse!

 

Working with adults who had been sexually abused as children, many were damaged in some way, but equally many had decided that they would not let their abusers win by becoming self destructive.