BPS attempts at psychologizing Long Covid

rvallee

rvallee

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
In the coming months, the BPS brigades will attempt to promote their alternative model to people suffering from post-COVID-19 illness. There will be papers and editorials, but also less formal attempts at promoting various treatment approaches and a "different" way to think about long COVID. Whereas the formal stuff will have their own threads, it's worth keeping tracks of those swings-and-a-miss, if only for the sheer entertainment value.

I begin this thread because I found one in the wild and it went about as well as could be expected. Take a guess who went first, I think many will guess right.
 
And a wild Henrik appears

(adding quotes since many will no doubt be blocked)


Hi Trish. These symptoms should be taken seriously, but also consider this.
Click to expand...

I haven't said it is not "real". No symptoms are "unreal" and all have biological basis. There are sequelae and pathophysiological patterns after viral infections. At one point the causal factors driving chronificastion may more be stress-driven symptom focus.
Click to expand...

I have initiated an organization (on my spare time) of patients who have had ME/CFS (often "postviral") and who have recoveredl. Many of them now cite doctors who paint a dark picture as very negative factors etiologically. Learn from their stories...
Click to expand...

Ah, the ME activism is already onboard. That was quick! Well, Trish, this is also something you should be aware of: ME activism is now blending with "Long covid awareness".
Click to expand...

And no, I am not promoting anything. I have lifted forward a kind of patient voice that has been downplayed and harassed by people concerned with ME activism, because it doesn't fit their narrative that it is "physical" as in completely "non-mental, non-stressbased".
Click to expand...
https://twitter.com/HenrikVogt/status/1285677105209053184
It shouldn't have been a problem to lift forward the voices of those who have recovered and to listen and learn from them. The ME movement isn't a movement that really represents the patients, only those who fit their political narrative. I'm not ok with that. I am done here..
Click to expand...
https://twitter.com/HenrikVogt/status/1285667897394835456
We should listen to patients and their narratives, but at the same time (as you know) that doesn't make them doctors. We are supposed to know things they don't although they have an experience we don't. They don't know disease and medicine better then we do.
Click to expand...
https://twitter.com/HenrikVogt/status/1285668752554688515
No, but I think I am more concerned with the mentioned iatrogenic harm here than most, much because of my experience with the recovered ME/CFS patients who REALLY have a perspective because they have gone through both sickness AND recovery.
Click to expand...
https://twitter.com/HenrikVogt/status/1285674159876579331
Being a doctor or other professional doesn't make you immune to the factors described in Barsky´s article. Firstly, doctors know little about these factors, secondly, doctors who get sick are also afraid and human. In Recovery Norway we also have different health care personell.
Click to expand...
https://twitter.com/HenrikVogt/status/1285678926069669888
Yes, doctors make mistakes. The idea of them as pitted against the patients, hiding things from them etc is not very helpfu thoughl, but common in post-infectious syndromes activism. Like "chronic Lyme". Will likely be a factor in "long covid".
Click to expand...
https://twitter.com/HenrikVogt/status/1285685713036615681
Doctors aren't necessarily saying "it is all in their heads". But underneath a lot of this activism I find deep contempt for "psychological" problems. Such problems can become VERY serious. Would you call that "all in your head"? If so, you have a problem with being derogatory.
Click to expand...
https://twitter.com/HenrikVogt/status/1285686115022843905
Take the time, for example, to read the story of Thomas. Then at the end of it, ask if you want to dismiss it as "all in his head".
Click to expand...
https://twitter.com/HenrikVogt/status/1285707817748398083
Sure it is complex. But also, biomedicine has a way of creating a cloud of noise around these patients with information that suggests something is defect in their bodies. In CFS/ME believing disease is "physically caused" is bad prognostic factor. Why add to that hopelessness?
Click to expand...

What a jackass.
 
strategist said:
Yes I think they will, but they've also been surprisingly quiet. Maybe this pandemic is also helping them understand how wrong they've been.
Click to expand...

I echo this. I think they have been very quiet of late. It's making me wonder if the messages are getting through or if they are scheming away ready for a bit of a wee comeback. And from past performances I suspect likelihood favours the later rather sadly.

Joan
 
rvallee said:
In the coming months, the BPS brigades will attempt to promote their alternative model to people suffering from post-COVID-19 illness.
Click to expand...
They're already under attack over GET:

"The large number of patients experiencing post-viral fatigue after covid-19 has now shone a spotlight on the controversial technique again.

Among this number is Paul Garner, professor of infectious disease at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and director of the Centre for Evidence Synthesis in Global Health. Early in his recovery Garner realised that he was experiencing post-exertional malaise, as every time he did any exercise that increased his heart rate, such as cycling or yoga, he found himself back in bed.89

Garner, who is coordinating editor of the Cochrane Infectious Diseases Group and one of the founders of the Cochrane Collaboration, said that he was “furious” when he read the 2007 NICE advice and the conclusions of the Cochrane review, which also support exercise therapy and mention uncertainty about the side effects of adaptive pacing.10

“Obviously, I know that if I increase my exercise I will be thrown back to bed,” he said. “What I struggle with as a highly driven medic is stopping myself overdoing it. That’s what I need help with—I don’t need help to increase my exercise.” "​

https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m2912
 
Oh Henrik! How can you be so insensitive to caution against taking patients too seriously, while they are figuratively screaming for help as loud as they can. And then follow up with a recommendation for a think yourself well in 3 days therapy.

I don't know what's wrong with you but I hope it's nothing serious, and just an innocent lack of experience.
 
Vogt can only continue to say what he does because he conflates a self-limiting though longer recovery from PVFS (a recovery that does not require any intervention) and ME/cfs which does NOT resolve with any treatment. He simply will not hear it.

Perhaps there are people out there who have had PVFS and who recovered with no treatment?
 
Mike Dean said:
They're already under attack over GET:

"The large number of patients experiencing post-viral fatigue after covid-19 has now shone a spotlight on the controversial technique again.

Among this number is Paul Garner, professor of infectious disease at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and director of the Centre for Evidence Synthesis in Global Health. Early in his recovery Garner realised that he was experiencing post-exertional malaise, as every time he did any exercise that increased his heart rate, such as cycling or yoga, he found himself back in bed.89

Garner, who is coordinating editor of the Cochrane Infectious Diseases Group and one of the founders of the Cochrane Collaboration, said that he was “furious” when he read the 2007 NICE advice and the conclusions of the Cochrane review, which also support exercise therapy and mention uncertainty about the side effects of adaptive pacing.10

“Obviously, I know that if I increase my exercise I will be thrown back to bed,” he said. “What I struggle with as a highly driven medic is stopping myself overdoing it. That’s what I need help with—I don’t need help to increase my exercise.” "​

https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m2912
Click to expand...
Discussed here:
https://www.s4me.info/threads/nice-...-context-of-covid-19.15870/page-4#post-275043
 
Snowdrop said:
Perhaps there are people out there who have had PVFS and who recovered with no treatment?
Click to expand...

I do know some, but one in particular got glandular fever in her late 40s. After seven months she was referred to a CFS service, as she just wasn't recovering. She went for one appointment, where she was given a CFS diagnosis; having known me for several years and learned a bit about the NHS approach, she decided not to make any more appointments.

After another couple of months she began to improve, though, and within 11 months she was well enough to go back to work. This was in 2014 and she's never had any health problems since, so it looks as if she just had a particularly long-winded version of PVFS rather than ME. She was lucky in that they could manage on her husband's salary, so there was no pressure to resume her self-employed practice until she was ready.
 
Trish said:
Personally I think Vogt is best ignored. He's an LP proponent, not part of the mainstream BPS narrative who have influenced NICE, Cochrane etc.
Click to expand...
He's involved in the new LP trial in... Denmark? With Wyller? So very much part of the BPS brigade. He's a quack but just as much as the other quacks.

And anyway the "official" BPS brigade has formally promoted the SMILE trial so they are very much in favor of the LP for ME.
 
Snowdrop said:
Perhaps there are people out there who have had PVFS and who recovered with no treatment?
Click to expand...
I mean that's pretty much most, as best we can tell. That's one of the things Wessely loves to laugh about, "they recover all on their own", which is equally true of a flu that lasts a week or a month, no reason why it would be different for longer term. It's also true of some cancers, though much less frequently.

But that actually tells us something. Just as the massive difference in symptoms with COVID, not only the difference in symptom presentation but that some people have no symptoms at all. This is all relevant information that is simply hand-waved away.

So yeah any silly thing will have people who "recover". Exact same thing as ancient remedies for the cold, you take it and it just goes away by magic. But that's tiger-repelling rock logic, it's juvenile nonsense.
 
rvallee said:
He's involved in the new LP trial in... Denmark? With Wyller? So very much part of the BPS brigade. He's a quack but just as much as the other quacks.

And anyway the "official" BPS brigade has formally promoted the SMILE trial so they are very much in favor of the LP for ME.
Click to expand...
Norway is not the capital of Denmark (sorry, just an old saying that really fit here) ;)

I belive Recovery Norge is also part of another study with Wyller, but I don't remember the name at the moment.
 
The fact Vogt is needing to go out and proactively engage like this on social media shows he’s non league level in terms of influence. The usual suspects won’t be using social media to influence key peers they’ll be speaking through professional channels, on the phone etc.
 
NelliePledge said:
The fact Vogt is needing to go out and proactively engage like this on social media shows he’s non league level in terms of influence. The usual suspects won’t be using social media to influence key peers they’ll be speaking through professional channels, on the phone etc.
Click to expand...
The problem, in Norway, is that having a patient organization as part of your study increases your chances of getting funding, and with Vogt being a doctor and something about ethics it gives credibility when researchers can point to collaboration with Recovery.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom