BPS attempts at psychologizing Long Covid

Someone on reddit has posted an English translation of an appalling interview with a "leading doctor for Long Covid" in Germany:

 

Of course it occurs to nobody that a reason many people presenting may have prior psych diagnoses is because this is what doctors tend to give out when they don't know what's wrong, and in most medical systems I am aware of most people will go via a GP to get to a 'leading doctor for long covid' picking up these psych diagnoses on the way, even if previously in perfect health, and never having seen a doctor before in their lives.

Nope, nobody in medicine is capable of thinking this, of understanding how their own systems actually work in reality.

 

Weird article about Long Covid yesterday in Norwegian TV2.

The "case" is a woman who tested positive for Covid just two weeks ago and is feeling reduced, but now out skiing. So not a very good example for the subject of the article..

Then a Danish senior doctor says they see Long Covid more often in women, and that most of the patients they now see with Long Covid weren't hospitalised during the infection so had milder infections. 74% were previously perfectly healthy.

It is speculated whether or not different immune systems in men and women can explain why more women are getting Long Covid, but the senior doctor also wonders if a different "health seeking behaviour" in men may be the reason for them having a higher threshold for reporting symptoms.

Signe Flottorp from The Norwegian Institute for Public Health on the other hand says there's reason to believe that Omicron will lead to less Long Covid, as it's milder. So seems she still believe Long Covid appears mainly in those who are hospitalised..

Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre also gives a comment concerning long term effects of Covid-19:
- It's important that prepare ourselves and deal with it. We have what's called "long covid" which is a physiological illness, fatigue, that one doesn't recover and the psychological effects of that.

I don't really understand what the Prime Minister is trying to say here, and it doesn't help to know he wrote a heart warming introduction to LP coach Live Landmarks book where she tells her story of recovering from ME with LP. Signe Flottorp is also an eager fan of LP. It seems we're heading straight in to a BPS approach to Long Covid in this country

TV2 Nye tall viser klar long covid-tendens: - Ville vært litt krise for meg
google translation: New numbers show a clear long covid trend: - Would have been quite a crisis for me

 

This stops short of wholeheartedly endorsing PACE and the edifice undergirding it, but to those engrossed in this discourse, the rhetoric is all too familiar.

For context, this is Adam Gaffney’s wife recycling the same hackneyed tropes used to denigrate and vilify ME patients for decades. The small group of irascible activists (never patients irreparably harmed by GET) leading impressionable rustics astray with their anti-psychiatry bigotry. If one closes their eyes, they can replace Shure with Sharpe, Wessely, Vogt, etc.

I realize that friends in the UK may not be as familiar with Gaffney and Shure, but they’re meticulously cultivating positions as public intellectuals through the sedulous psychologizing of Long Covid. I’m always reticent about platforming these denialist missives further, but I wanted to ensure that everyone here is aware of these figures and their fervent ideological commitments.

 

It's amazing how most reporting somehow manages to advance a fringe activist cause. Truly amazing. Especially since it doesn't, denialist voices are still dominant. But let's not let facts get in the way of a good circular reasoning.

 

Long Covid now major cause of long-term job absence, say quarter of UK employers
https://www.ft.com/content/33444f29-bab1-4655-85b5-c0b1f68d9653

May, or may not, be paywalled, seems to depend on how recently you have visited their website.

 

...all whilst most of medicine says it doesn't exist, as a thing, as opposed to a cultural delusion.

I wonder at which point medicine will change it's mind - 50% off work, 75%?

 

"We carried out stakeholder involvement in the form of discussions with GPs....We did not carry out patient and public involvement"

Primary outcome measures: Expected symptom severity...Expected symptom duration...Expected personal control....Expected treatment control...Expected illness coherence...Expected QOL...".

"We found that changing the way in which Long COVID symptoms and the support available were described affected negative expectations of illness outcomes. Our findings are in line with the extant literature regarding illness uncertainty and health outcomes, as illness uncertainty is associated with increased symptom severity, lack of personal control, decline in mental health, and diminished quality of life, amongst other outcomes in those living with a chronic condition (10). The study also provides support for the Common-Sense Model of Self-Regulation which posits that illness description and symptoms help to shape illness perceptions (7)."

They seem to have made a huge leap from "telling people to expect bad things makes people expect bad things" to "expecting bad things leads to negative outcomes".

 

I don't think anybody here will be surprised to see this.
https://twitter.com/user/status/1494724731639115777

 

Would he have been rejected if he scored as 'depressed'?

 

I assumed so. If doctors think they can fix everything with anti-depressants then they wouldn't see a need to have anyone investigated properly for issues caused by Covid.

 

I expect clinics ready accept people who score as depressed but I know that GPs will assume depression or anxiety and not even refer the patient in the first place.

When I went in for a trapped nerve in my foot I got screened for depression and was told it would go away on its own (it didn't, had surgery).

When I started coming down with ME I got told I had anxiety and that if I couldn't lift weights anymore then a walk should be good enough.

 

UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL ESSEN
Professor of medicine: I don't share the panic about Long Covid
https://www.waz.de/staedte/essen/me...k-gemacht-id234479215.html#Echobox=1643954140
automatic translation with deepl

 

A clear case of a beam in one's own eye.
Only 10% of patients are deluded enough to think they are still ill after a year.
But 100% of rehabilitationists are deluded enough to think they can take the credit for this.

 

He really doesn't like, well, patients, it seems.

Or mathematics.

If 20 percent had a prior psych diagnosis that means 80 percent did not, so how can that 20 percent, even if valid, be used as an explanation for 100 percent.