BPS attempts at psychologizing Long Covid

That phrase from Eleanor Morgan has a very familiar ring to it.

As for Tomlinson, he seems to have an extremely patronising view of his socially deprived patients. A bit like Wessely's self image - far to good for this but I'm such a nice chap I'm prepared to waste my talents on these poor undeserving folk.

The Guardian is a cesspit. What do they think they are the guardians of, exactly?

 

“Hi Jonathon, I’m Charlotte, I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve got four things I’d like to discuss this morning, they’ll all be quick.”

“Of course” I lied, shifting my expression from a smile of greeting to friendly concern, “Can you tell me what they are?”

I would have un malaise if my GP was writing blogs on social media about fictitious patients and how she interacts with them. I would be looking for a new GP.

 

As @dave30th notes, the Morgan piece has been followed by something much more helpful. As far as I can see the Morgan piece was also removed from the online menu almost at once. Maybe Frances Ryan put in a word and maybe some editor is learning something.

 

We used to have a member, I hope he is well, who liked to point out the origins of the Guardian, which were not quite what one expected.

 

Re The Guardian - the 'rot' sets in circa 1995. Me and my colleague spent years researching newspaper articles and there is a definite shift in the paper's reporting of 'M.E.' from the mid-nineties. This coincides with both the rise of SW and a change in editor at the paper. The first mention of SW in any paper we found (and I'm not claiming perfection in searching here but we have, it's fair to say, hundreds of articles on the topic of M.E.) is in 1986 so it's not as if SW wasn't around in the media pre-95.

Up as far as the late 80s the coverage is more sympathetic.
One might draw one's own conclusions, perhaps?

One small note mind you - 'mass hysteria' gets touted as an explanation in some papers after an incident in Blackburn in the mid-sixties so it's not all perfect up to 95.

I'd encourage anyone to go through online archives if they have the money (subscriptions etc) because, amongst other things, it's really quite interesting. Not everything is available online of course and the more obscure/local the paper is the less chance that there's a digital version available.

 

The Morgan piece is still available online here:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...th-long-covid-months-after-catching-the-virus

It's still listed among Morgan's articles if you search under her name at the Guardian website.

As has been noted already in this thread, the Guardian has considerable "previous" and has let us down badly many times before, when a newspaper of their purported leanings should have been much more supportive. Now that we are finally seeing progress on various fronts, it is very disheartening to see such an article getting past whatever passes for quality control at the Guardian and them being happy to carry on as they have for the past few decades. Whatever other virtues the Guardian may have, their coverage of ME has been abysmal and I am unable to think of them as anything other than a cesspit in this regard until they pull their socks up and show me otherwise. This article isn't showing me otherwise. Following the article by something much more helpful is a progress of sorts I suppose, but the fact that the Morgan article was published at all was an unpleasant shock of the kind I was starting to hope we might have seen the last of.

 

Regarding Morgan, I have just read @dave30th two blogs on the matter, which as ever are excellent. However he is more generous to Morgan than I would be.

I agree that everyone can get things wrong. It's how they react next that's important. From Morgan's tweets I've seen so far, there is no sign of her getting beyond her defensive posture. In particular this phrase:

is exceptionally annoying. As a journalist Morgan is a professional communicator. Communication is what is received, and if a substantial number of readers take issue with the message that was received, it should cause her to reflect upon what she communicated and how. Instead she blames the reader much as Wessely and the PACE authors blame the patients and therapists when GET doesn't work. We didn't read it properly. If she's saying we understood her incorrectly, she's the professional communicator, so where should she be looking for the solution for this misunderstanding?

What I would like is an apology from EM, and for the article to be corrected or withdrawn, by her, instead of just tweeting that we should read it properly. She could have just written an excellent article about her personal experiences with Long Covid, without purporting scientific knowledge as to the causes. All we are asking is that if she decides to go there, she should go there properly, instead of serving up some half-arsed sloppy research and inaccurate psychobabble long since discredited. Maybe as EM is training as a psychologist that field is the only place she looked, or a sub-culture within that field, but it's not good enough.

I realise that an ME sufferer daring to wish for an apology and correction is effrontery of the highest order, but after 7 years of this illness I still can't get used to or accept the abysmally low standards that have been common in journalistic reporting of our illness. Why should I? And I shouldn't have to jump up and down and shout "whooptifuck!" when we get an occasional good article, that should be a matter of course. Gratitude that an article appears that doesn't contain the usual pack of lies we've been subjected to for the past decades? Of course I'm pleased to see such articles, but really.

 

Or me. I agree with all the above.

My impression is that things have got worse in the last four years or so in terms of allowing unthinking zealots to set up their stalls. Morgan clearly has something prove and doesn't mind if she treads on people. I was just hoping that the downward slope might have had a little upward inflexion after the tweeting.

 

She's a writer and journalist. I have a soft spot for writers/journalists!
If she were an electrical engineer or a herpetologist or professor of ancient macrame arts, I'd have much less inherent empathy and would probably be less generous. (Unless the macrame was really good.)

 

It's an instinct we're up against when we're trying to get medical researchers to be condemning of medical researchers!

In cases like this I find that I'm more likely to regret being insufficiently generous (especially of something I've written when still irritated), so I liked the tone of the blog. For a first offence, caring rehabilitation is the best place to start. But three strikes and you're out!

 

#MEAction: #MEAction Responds to Guardian UK Article Dismissing ME And Long Covid Patients As Hysterical

Last Sunday, The Guardian UK published an article called, “Long Covid: Is This Now Me Forever?” that derides and stigmatizes both the long Covid and ME community as falling prey to a disease-mindset and catastrophic thinking. Just another hysterical women’s disease.

#MEAction sent the following letter to the editor at the Guardian, asking them to remove the article, which is highly stigmatizing to both communities.

 

The new editor Alan Rusbridger will have been targeted and networked by SW. Despite his journalistic credentials, his degree in English won't have insulated him against BPS propaganda.

 

You have to ask the question "why would SW and Co. not do that?" To my mind, no reason whatsoever. I agree with you entirely. I also imagine the network hub that is the SMC will also be very actively engaged behind the scenes ... again you have to ask, why would they not be? The idea that these sort of people would not be engaging in such things is, to my mind, incredibly unlikely.

 

@Barry 100%

 

If I can expand a little on my recent reply I'd add that - and I'm rather using another date for convenience here - the press/media is broadly sympathetic up until roughly 1988, publishing a number of articles featuring Clare Francis amongst others around that time. However, at around the same time in 88 as the BBC Horizon documentary is shown Yorkshire TV make an edition of their science programme "Where There's Life" which is networked on ITV. This drew so many complaints from PWMEs that the backlash was reported in the press.

Fast forward to 1996. An Esther Rantzen show on BBC 1 asks 'does M.E. exist?' and in October of that year you have 'Chronic Fatigue Syndrome' https://youtu.be/qrVO1s8u3K. In between all that you have Camelford and Gulf War Syndrome.

I'm simplifying it somewhat but between the mid-eighties and mid-nineties you have the rise of SW. I personally do not believe that his influence is a benign one for PWMEs and others who have been affected by those issues.

SW had only a few days before the Beard/McEvedy 'Reconsideration' paper become a teenager. Impressionable age.

EDIT: Healthwatch is also founded in between the mid-eighties and mid-nineties. One of the founders was Michael O'Donnell who, coincidentally, was scientific adviser to "Where There's Life". They held their first meeting in 1988. On their committee was Caroline Richmond.

 

I thought that this overstated the case in a way that could be unhelpful. Did the article even mention hysteria?

 

Thanks for the detail, @AR68.

Possibly the understatement of the millennium. Maybe to be discussed on the "Who is SW?" thread.

 

The implied meaning was clearly there. Words aren't magical spells, they don't have to be said out loud for their meaning to be obvious.

 

Mildly off-topic but there's a French doctor currently being extremely annoying about denying Long Covid and dismissing it as hysteria.

His name? Dr Freund.

So close.

(Edit: mildly encouraging but I saw several physicians admonishing him for it, at least there's that)

 

Hopefully there will be much more widespread motivation and resources to get to the bottom of long covid than there ever has been for ME, so that some real answers are found. In the process it would be great if it furthered better understanding of ME/CFS.