Mainly about safe to discuss historical diagnosis. Wessely got a lot of time to promote his theory on Shell shock. I thought there was recent research suggesting structural or functional brain change in shell shock but it didn’t cover that. Neurasthenia wasn’t connected to CFS at all and whilst the cultural explanations of neurasthenia were sort of laughed at, I personally don’t see much difference to Wesselys cultural explanation of shell shock and trauma or indeed CFS, what did he say once it was “the cultural metaphor or our time “ or something. Modern controversial diagnosis and classification such as CFS FM GWAS and ADHD , social anxiety, which some say are over diagnosed, weren’t discussed at all but would have been interesting.
The issue is that this was a huge vehicle for Simon Wessely. There's no doubt in my mind he'd have got the last word.
The brain damage research on Shell shock https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/06/blast-shock-tbi-ptsd-ied-shell-shock-world-war-one/
Episode 3: „What‘s in a Label?“, BBC Radio 4 (D for Diagnosis) How accurate is a mental health diagnosis? Claudia Hammond reports on the value of a label and finds out why some mental health practitioners just refuse to give them. (ME / CFS not mentioned in the text, not able to listen)) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006tyz Producer: Fiona Hill