CBT repackaged or a novel treatment? The Lightning Process compared with UK specialist medical care for paediatric [CFS], 2021, Anderson et al

What more need be said . Good ol' Phil, always good for a laugh.

 

There are many extremely weird things about this paper, but these two aspects, put together, to me are the most astonishing -- and a bit difficult to digest.

I think it's a big success that the paper apparently was not accepted by any of the journals where Crawley usually gets her papers published. It means that David's and all his co-authors' and cosignatories' work, letters, comments, articles etc. on exposing EC's ridiculous claims finally seem to have a real impact on editors.

That the paper (that shows even more clearly than the previous publications by Crawley's group and the PACE allies how ridiculous their research is) has been published in Fatigue of all journals, hurts though.

see also: https://www.s4me.info/threads/inter...ce-august-19-21-2021.18789/page-2#post-355682

Edit: link

 

Thanks @Hutan

Forgot that important bit: it's the IACFS/ME that published this. Astonishing, concerning, and puzzling!

 

My personal wish would be that IACFSME were dismantled. IMO they are worse than useless.

It's infuriating and there isn't even a word for the level of insulting to people with ME/cfs. We don't need THIS.

 

I’m reminded of a tweet by Dr Phil Hammond (UK celebrity, comedian and GP who works in EC’s bath CFS clinic for children) back in 2017:
https://twitter.com/user/status/913840221514584064


Context:

 

Completely agree, but reference 49 lead me to a text that said this:

"One of the assumptions of the transtheoretical approach is that therapists should be at least as cognitively complex as their clients."

 

I'm not going to bother linking to it but I saw that Phil Parker posted an article saying that researchers "found" differences between CBT and LP. Which did make me laugh, so at least there's that.

Yes, a paper documenting the differences between two similar things, found differences, which is exactly what is set out to argue. Trivial differences, but nonetheless to claim that they "found" differences when it was the literal intent to show what the differences are is just accidentally hilarious, in a very dark humor kind of way.

 

CBT for Fatigue is phobia treatment. You are afraid of feeling tired, you are afraid of PEM. You are in a boom/bust cycle being driven by your thoughts and feelings.

I think these folks are going to push towards Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. The commitment part will be used in the same way they are using phobia treatment in the CBT-F model.

 

Trial By Error: Some Lightning Process Updates

"In any event, it has seemed for a while that the CBT and LP camps were merging into a mutual admiration and support society. That process seems to have reached a new level with a recent paper published in the journal Fatigue: Biomedicine, Health & Behavior. The paper is called “CBT repackaged or a novel treatment? The Lightning Process compared with UK specialist medical care for paediatric Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.”

It is co-authored by, among others, Dr Phil Parker, the spiritual healer, osteopath and now psychologist who created the Lightning Process, and Professor Esther Crawley, Bristol University’s methodologically and ethically challenged pediatrician. Professor Crawley was the lead investigator of a seriously flawed 2017 pediatric trial of the LP. It is not surprising that she and Dr Parker are now proposing further pediatric trials involving both CBT and the LP."

https://www.virology.ws/2021/07/13/trial-by-error-some-lightning-process-updates/

 

@dave30th Did you find this for Artemis Coaching. It is apparently in Leighton Buzzard which is Bedfordshire, so not Suffolk, but it
does look a likely candidate. Artemis - Homepage (artemiscoaching.me.uk)

 

From the website:

That really isn't how time management works. In fact "Do it now!" the cause of the problem - Are you getting overwhelmed by the feeling that you have to do everything now? You can't do it all now, stop feeling you have to, get organised instead. Try a time management course.

So on that basis, I'm out.

 

Maybe there are a lot of Artemis Coachings? It doesn't really matter who it is, actually.

 

@Wyva and I have found more information on the person who has registered the company in these two posts:

https://www.s4me.info/threads/voices-of-recovery-website.21454/#post-357116

https://www.s4me.info/threads/voices-of-recovery-website.21454/#post-357120

@strategist has also found that a questionnaire must be filled to join the Facebook group: https://www.s4me.info/threads/voices-of-recovery-website.21454/#post-357249

 

Thought I’d mention it somewhere: I’m listening to the September 25 edition of Matt and Mollie that went out on (BBC) Radio One (listening on the BBC Sounds app). Starting at around 1:10:18, a caller who is a “clinical hypnotherapist and LP coach” does a quiz on hypnosis. She never spells out what LP stands for so I imagine few of the listeners would know what it is. She doesn’t talk about ME or anything related.

 

Not sure if this has been posted yet:

This research seems to be affiliated with Bristol's "Health Psychology and Intervention Group" (HPIG) :

https://www.bristol.ac.uk/population-health-sciences/research/groups/hpig/members/

Crawley isn't listed as a member but the paper's first author , Emma Anderson , runs the group together with Anna Davies .

Also, I wasn't aware that there was a 'Lightning Process' research website linked to the HPIG:

https://www.bristol.ac.uk/academic-child-health/research/research/cfsme/lightning-process/

"The Lightning Process®(LP) is a commercially-available complementary intervention based on Neurolinguistic Programming, Life coaching and Osteopathy.

"The SMILE trial1,2,3 demonstrated that adolescents with CFS/ME were more likely to improve with LPplus specialist medical care (SMC) compared to SMC alone.

"We need greater understanding of the LP and how it may benefit patients, looking for potential mechanisms of action that may improve SMC. The aims of this project are to:

• Define LP in the context of established/evidence-based therapies (e.g. CBT/behavioural therapies)
• Analyse practitioner-patient interactions within LP sessions, seeking distinctiveness from SMC sessions (using SMILE Trial recordings)
• Apply for a full-scale trial of LP vs CBT for paediatric CFS/ME"

Planned publication (currently under review):

• Conversation Analysis examining in detail what happens within Lightning Process group sessions

Edit: Info on the research project added.

 

Wow. These people really are beyond the pale.