Covid-19 - Psychological research and treatment

https://www.mylondon.news/news/health/london-psychologist-says-its-normal-18183904

 

Very refreshingly measured article!

 

I think I have just stumbled upon the most insanely delusional piece of pseudoscientific psychobabble nonsense. This is a cancer on science. Absolute lunacy. I am frankly very divided on whether this is satirical, you could not satirize the concept of psychosomatics any dumber than this.

Mind, Body, Illness: Amidst Pandemic, Opportunities for Discovery

https://www.psychologicalscience.or...s-amidst-pandemic-opportunities-for-discovery

This is the president of the Association for Psychological Science. President. Not the insane ramblings of a lunatic on a street corner. President. Whew.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1258766400048545794

 

I can think of a simple experiment that might settle the matter.

Remove the brain, but keep the body 'alive' using whatever they use to do that.

It doesn't have to be the whole brain, just the bit that this president of psychologists uses to 'think' with.

Then expose whats left to viruses, and see if they do what viruses do.

I'd bet a fiver they would.

 

I have just now saved this hilarious/tragic piece for posterity on internet archive.

The one comment below the article opines that putting forward a psychological framework for illness as the article does far overstates psychological roles in biologic illness and does a disservice to psychology. He is not wrong.

 

Beware the psychologist with hurt feelings about the irrelevance of psychology to most sciences.

 

That's a shame. I've just listened to her audio book on the "construction of emotions" and liked it.

But it seems to her illness is constructed, too

I can't follow her logic in that article at all.

 

They drop virus into tissue culture all the time and it manages to replicate.

Also viruses have been around for, what is it, billions of years? Yet consciousness and thoughts only for a few million and only in one species. Plants get infected by viruses and bacteria, as do fish, frogs, fungi and even bacteria have viruses. Cholera is only deadly when it is infected with a virus.

To quote CS Lewis "What do they teach these people?"

 

On one of my first undergraduate psychology assignments I was criticised because my explanation of reaction time was 'too physiological'...

 

Hahahahaha

 

oh goody..........


Trudie Chalder
Professor Trudie Chalder is researching into what we can we learn from acceptance and commitment therapy in relation to COVID-19.

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/mental-health-research

 

Haven't covid patients already suffered enough?

 

article in Telegraph (requires subscription to view full article):
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/mind/suffering-bad-case-lockdown-brain-fog/

 

Yes, we can see how important routine is to Trudge Chalder. She and her pals have been following the same routine at work for years and years with only the most minute changes.

Regardless of the patient cohort they've been rerunning the same experiment on different groups of patients and getting the same results. Literally the same results every time to the extent I'm not entirely sure if the patients' condition is the focus of the research, or if they simply placed a bet with each other years ago to see how long the British establishment would let them get away with soaking up a lot of money for achieving naff all.

You would wonder why they even bother actually doing the work anymore, except well... without an original thought or insight in their heads their daily work routine is probably about all they can cling to. Let's face it, they've been doing the same thing over and over for so long it can hardly be onerous.

 

Or many of them will struggle on and hide it as best they can from colleagues. I've heard of consultants who had to quietly go and rest in their cars during the day just to get through. They didn't dare let colleagues find out as it would have destroyed their reputation.

I've heard about people who have struggled on at work, trying to get reasonable adaptations or reduce their hours and faced nasty comments and discrimination. The worst of these seemed to come from people who worked in healthcare.

 

I grant you that routines save energy in normal-ish people. You don't have to think through all the steps of, say, your morning ablutions. Routines seem to enforce identity (which is a floating concept I think).

All well and good, Chalder, stick with the trivial psychology of everyday stuff. Leave the ME/CFS and PVFS to the real professionals (MDs who aren't psychiatrists, at least of them).

She has really brainwashed herself by taking CBT way beyond its natural boundaries, into sci-fi land.

Further ad hominem: she lacks empathy to imagine herself having ME/CFS as a vulnerable human being and believing what sufferers say about their illness. She would never make it as an MD or a nurse.

The medical profession has to be careful when they say: we have no treatments for such and such illness but you can consult a psychologist to help you cope with it better. Referring a patient to psychology does not mean that every aspect of the psychology's bathwater is to be used to drown the patient.

First do no harm.

Psychology without a base of empathy is evil.

 

Showing she has no idea what brain fog is. Well this is embarrassing. Or it would be if things mattered.

"Trust us we're experts" is going to come out very badly out of this. It breaks the entire premise of professional certification.