A key problem for patients is that there is no specialty that “owns MUS.”
Heeeh... not true. Not entirely. It's only true because psychosomatic medicine is not formally a specialty of its own, but for decades the entire concept has been dominated by the ideology and this is why no progress has been made. I don't like this "no one is responsible for this" take, it's very wrong. There are people responsible for this, and they're not dancing alone. It takes people to make the invalid claims and it takes a majority who either endorse it, or never object to it. It's a partnership, and while the ideologues who make the stuff up about psychosomatic models have a lot of blame, so does the profession as a whole for embracing it and enabling their reign of error.
This was not handed down from the heavens on stone tablets or the product of natural of random chance, such as evidence that was overwhelmingly strong but turned out to have been incorrect because of genuine ignorance. It was all made-up based on long-ingrained myths and beliefs, founded far more in bigotry than in anything having to do with science.
It's been happening for the exact same reasons why there is such a thing as gay conversion therapy, the principles and beliefs underneath are the exact same, and so are the outcomes.
And there's this:
Patient organisations often play a key role in supporting patients and their families, but professional support is needed too.
True, but in our case those organisations have been vilified and fully discriminated against, and continue to. They have almost zero professional recognition, in fact it's standard practice to advise against ever talking with other patients, a choice some people made based on delusional beliefs and logical fallacies. Long Covid is following exactly the same standard patterns.
Clinicians will do better by these patients if they are non judgemental, offer holistic care, and are transparent about the limits of modern medicine. A causation and cure for symptoms may be elusive, but humane care and compassion should not be.
Then you need to end the reign of psychosomatic medicine, because it's built entirely out of abusing those limits to make baseless assertions. There is no future in which the millions of people suffering from illnesses discriminated by medicine on the basis of psychosomatic models receive competent professional care and psychosomatic ideology remains in its current state, of fully dominating the space consisting of things medicine doesn't fully understand.
And really the "fully understand" is critical now, as psychosomatic ideology keeps expanding despite having never delivered anything, and that has included this absurd idea that it's possible to have a disease, but the symptoms, the illness, are "better explained" by the old mythical conversion disorder, reflecting distress from knowing about, or even just believing in, having a disease. This was always complete horseshit and it can't be avoided to say it, acknowledge it and act on it.
It's great that this is being talked about in honest terms, but it's a struggle similar to slavery: there is no future in which those enslaved are freed where slaveowners continue to exist or even thrive. Those are mutually exclusive futures, they have zero overlap with one another. Psychosomatic ideology has been a literal plague on humanity, a capstone on medical science, and it has to be said plainly. Evil is banal, it's bureaucratic, often mediocre, indifference to others.
This is what psychosomatic medicine does and will always do as long as it exists in any form. Putting a cute bow on it won't even come close to making up for it, in fact fake compassion, with intent to build trust on false pretenses and manipulate the patients, is a cornerstone of current psychosomatic models.
