BPS attempts at psychologizing Long Covid

...but one of Wessely's first studies (with Powell in 1988 or 89) found that about a quarter to a third (I forget the precise numbers) suffered from neither anxiety nor depression.

 

Kings College London still doing their usual bit of pushing for psychosomatic ideology.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1407321764410150913


Edit:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1407432018149875714


Edit 2: looks like KCL is awkwardly finding out that all those tropes about a "militant minority" may have in fact been false, but instead are choosing to just block anyone even asking questions, including other medical professionals

Edit 3: it appears that after blocking many questions, including from medical professionals, the twitter account was set to private, hence why the 1st tweet isn't showing

 

Mayo gonna mayo...

https://twitter.com/user/status/1407696444715257862


https://twitter.com/user/status/1407697436059996170


"Change your words". And in the US, this means people will be paying for this privilege.

 

A Swedish man with long covid writes on his Facebook page about getting diagnosed with FND after a relapse recently.

 

Haven't watched this. Don't know if it's still the Gupta programme he's on, or something else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-un3TK4caA

Description of video:

With 205 symptoms listed for Long Covid, and over 2 million people affected - in England alone - Long Covid is a complex, dehabilitating multi-system illness that is affecting people on a scale not seen for generations.

But one of the most controversial aspects of the illness is the role that psychology plays - there is already extensive literature documenting anxiety and depression as symptoms, but whether psychology might play a role in recovery is a controversy that dates back to the use of CBT for ME/CFS.

Is there another way of looking at the interection of brain, body and mind though, given that there's a huge amount of science showing that what we think and feel affects what our body does on a physiological level?

In this presentation I made at the TLC conference on the 20th June, I discuss the improvement I have made in recent months and how I am currently looking at the interventions we need to make on a holistic level, which most definitely include the way we think and feel about the disease.

 

I watched some parts of this: he is feeling a bit better now and is basically doing a Paul Garner in his own way.

He even says that what has helped him is the same that also helped many recovered ME/CFS patients.
Although I have to admit he does warn us that this may be a controversial opinion.

Without detailing it too much, his advice: pacing + antihistamins + ivermectin etc for symptoms.

Breathwork + meditation + acupuncture + cranial osteopathy + psychotherapy for emotional release.

Otherwise, the long haulers are in a negative feedback loop that connects their body and mind and they have to break out of that to help healing. And they can do that by: changing their mindset, not identifying with the condition, spending less time on LC social media, stop calling themselves ill etc. A big part of the video is about this negative, stressful thought pattern that has to be stopped.



So you posted this in the perfect thread.

Didn't he make a video the other day with Ben Marsh, doctor wME and dr Aziz Khan, a long hauler? I thought that was a good sign.

 

congratulations leading me to the only video on you tube that i have pressed the dislike button for . the man comes across as a simpleton as soon as he starts talking about body brain and feedback loops . purely opinion with zero evidence.

 

It's sad that it's lost on everyone, and I'm mostly talking about professionals here, Gez isn't and is free to believe weird stuff if he wants, that this is literally the way people have always attributed weird magical powers to objects or rituals, that they just happened to correlate with the problem resolving itself to a thing that just happened to be there. Chauncey medicine, not quite chance, just the chance of something just being there, with "there" doing a lot of work.

Why do people swear that drinking urine is good for health and cured X? And other weird false attribution beliefs? This is exactly how. Yet the very "shkeptics" who laugh at people doing that attribution are perfectly willing to accept even weirder attributions like this. Sing a song to your pain to make it go away? Sure, just as good as opioids. Who cares? It's magic, doesn't need explaining.

It's the same process of magical thinking mixed with bad science. Good science works well at dismissing those claims, just as they did for the big hoopla made of hydroxychloroquine. But too many people still prefer their beliefs to be validated over doing good science, and they will sing their own scientific acumen for doing so, the very thing they mock other people for doing. And nothing better than just blocking science entirely to avoid being embarrassed by holding on to weird beliefs.

It's all belief. In the end people want to belief, attribute magical powers to things that are beyond scrutiny. And in medicine the "mind" has firmly occupied the place various gods used to inhabit. The result is the same. The failure is the exact same, zero difference here.

 

@Kalliope Who is that man in the video in post #845?

I checked out his channel but he doesn't answer the question directly in the "About" section of his channel, he tells people to go and watch one of his videos without answering the question.

Code:

https://youtu.be/FULycGPmN18

 

His name is Gez Medinger. I had not heard about him until he started making these YouTube videos on Long Covid.

He's a film maker. No wiki-page, but there's on at IMDb.

Honestly I had not looked him up until now, and had assumed there was some science background too.

 

Thanks, @Kalliope

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1410367432909328398

 

Long-Haul COVID Brings Long Road to Recovery

https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210630/long-haul-covid-brings-long-road-to-recovery


Despite 90% odds of recovery, somehow a single N=1 case is significant. Yes, it's Garner. With 90% recovery out of millions, it's probably very hard to find another case, I must assume. Very confused article pulling a both sides, that it's OK to psychologize symptoms but also that it's been terrible for patients. Which is seriously confused.

 

From the above link :

The only people and organisations I've heard of mentioning mental health consequences of Long Covid are from the likes of Garner, the NHS, the media, ...

I haven't come across patients saying that they suffer from mental health problems with Long Covid other than depression from having symptoms dismissed and being disbelieved.

Perhaps I'm just reading the wrong sources....

 

I'm not sure if this is due to the different circumstances, different history/current perception of such illnesses in different countries, and I'm not part of any foreign/internation long hauler groups. But in the Hungarian LC group there are plenty of people who say they have panic attacks or anxiety or depression as part of the illness.

I'm on very good terms with the admin of the biggest long hauler Facebook group and she is extremely frustrated with this, she believes people probably just parrot what their doctors say and/or what they hear from the media about LC all the time. She is convinced there is nothing mental about this (she has LC herself) and so are many others but I can definitely see people who describe at least some of their symptoms as mental. (My own impression from their description is that at least some of these people did have panic attacks etc pre-covid too.)

This might be different elsewhere though. Here, it is extremely rare to hear about the kind of long covid in the media that we discuss here. With a few exceptions they only report about loss of taste and smell, different kinds of organ damage and psychological issues. And this may influence some patients' perception. I don't know, just guessing.

 

suddenly struggling to get your breath i think is consistently written of as a panic attack unless you have a history of asthma . easy go to answer for many gps because it needs no further investigation .

 

Many people with long covid develop POTS, and that can present like a panic attack or anxiety, and also feel like a panic attack or inspire a panic attack. That may be an explanation

 

When my iron and ferritin levels are low I develop anxiety (and sometimes breathlessness, and sometimes hyperventilation) and can start to panic on occasion. Strangely enough (mild sarcasm) I've found that actually improving my iron/ferritin levels works a lot better at fixing these problems than any form of anti-depressant.

I suspect, but have no proof, that any nutrient being low could cause anxiety, depression, panic etc. If an essential nutrient is in short supply the body won't work at peak efficiency, and this could affect mood and the brain.

 

That seems normal. The modern definition of anxiety may as well be a description of dysautonomia. Naturally people suffering from dysautonomia will find that description fitting. And depression's definition may as well be the definition of feeling ill, at least the more broadly used on, not the proper clinical definition. And since this is how 99% of physicians will define dysautonomia, as being anxiety, it's basically validation. Ironically, it's usually people who do suffer from anxiety who will disagree more. I've seen so many of those, people saying they are familiar with anxiety and dysautonomia is very different, a comparison that people who do not experience any can't make.

The problem is medicine having botched those definitions to the point of uselessness. But it's normal for patients to match those descriptions, the modern concepts of mental illness are basically built on chronically ill populations, at least in terms of defining them and the possible symptoms. So this is as expected.

The problem is medicine's flawed perception and lack of technology to avoid the pitfalls of perception distorting reality, using failure to justify failing some more. Systemic miscategorization looks exactly the same as proper categorization, Dunning-Kruger and everything. If everyone makes the same mistake, how would any one person find out? The answer key says it's correct, therefore it must be.

 

Two doctors, two scientists and one specialist director from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health have written an opinion piece for the public broadcaster NRK where they are downplaying Long Covid and accusing the media for exaggerating its severity.

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health has taken a psychosomatic approach to ME over many years and some representatives are actively enthusiastic about Lightning Process.

It doesn't come as a surprise that they don't take Long Covid seriously.

Few long Covid patients are referred to specialists, and this seems to be good enough proof that they're not suffering from anything severe. But the problem is rather that there are no post-viral specialists the GPs can refer patients to..

Senskader og sensasjon
google translation: After effects and sensation

Quote:
Several media reports recently have given the impression that there are extensive late effects after covid-19, also after mild illness. This is not in line with the knowledge we have so far.

We must de-dramatize the late effects of Covid-19. The media has a responsibility. They must become more critical of the research methods used in the studies they discuss.

Most infectious diseases with a serious course will to a certain extent have late effects. Most infectious diseases with a mild course will cause few and short-term ailments.

A growing selection of studies shows that this is probably the case for covid-19 as well. It is very important that several good studies are carried out to shed light on this issue.

Data from FHI's emergency register, BeredtC19 , includes about 2 million Norwegians who have been tested for SARS-CoV-2. It shows a short-term and time-limited increase in the number of contacts with general practitioners - GPs and emergency services - after a mild course of covid-19.

The study shows no increase in specialist health service use when compared with those who have tested negative.

The media has overdramatized studies without good comparison groups.

When the ailments exclusively can be assessed and treated by the general practitioner, it means that the majority of the ailments are most likely mild - even though they can still be perceived as bothersome for the person concerned.