Cognitive-Behavioral Interventions With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Single Case Study

http://connect.springerpub.com/content/sgrjcp/11/2/127

 

This in a nutshell, to link to another thread debate, sums up how CFS has been treated , which is not that it has a serious biological basis. It’s all the patients fault - they’re not sick or seriously mentally ill, just thinking wrongly, with a depressed mood and a “satisfying life” can be returned to by thinking better and doing more with a therapist.
It also shows the issue with how the UK psychologists rebranded CFS once they got their mitts on it, abandon Fukuda many symptoms illness and make it tiredness and low mood/anxiety.

 

When I see these various works of fiction I also pause to wonder -- How do they ever get funded?
And how do they justify doing so?

 

What a load of f****** bullocks!

 

I have an albino rat, therefore all rats are albinos!

(I don't really)

 

Prolonged psychosomatic illness is medicine's philosopher's stone. There is evidence for acute events in alarming situations, but not detached from an actual traumatic event and leading to prolonged illness. I think it's an obsession for many, they badly want to be the one who will finally make the case that this exists. And we are the easiest, most defenseless patient population out there where they can operate without ethics or even genuine oversight. Failure is not a deterrent, it just serves to prove that the patients failed, not the model.

It's frankly alarming to see this attitude hold so much sway with medical professionals. There is a critical element missing from physicians' training for these ideas to be encouraged and promoted as serious areas of scientific research.

As for those who fund this, they most likely see the potential of dramatic savings if they can punt away many patients away from expensive medical care toward the black hole of pseudoscientific therapies.

 

I am always inclined to believe that money has a starring role in most of what goes on (and goes wrong) in the world. Although that statement is perhaps rather vague and overly general.

I'm hoping that within and outside this community there will be pressure brought to bear forcing discussions on what exactly can be claimed as solid robust research findings and what methodological flaws are rife within the system presently.

In other words, in their search for the philosopher's stone we will have forced them to up their game and the absence of evidence will prove just that -- the absence of evidence of their childish theories.

This is my hope. At least it helps keep me going.