Covid-19 - Psychological research and treatment

Yes I was about to say this. I could tick off a few of those statements at various times due to my OCD. But these psychologists always think of these things in a vacuum. If I was living in New Zealand right now, or Australia, or Vietnam or Denmark or Norway etc, or somewhere that was serious about eradicating the virus and making people and the country safe again, my OCD wouldn’t be flaring as it is now. Quite frankly if 17% of london had been infected, I am right to worry that coronavirus may well be on any surface, it may well be! It’s like saying oh your house is burning down, are you feeling anxious about the fire?

 

Exactly. It's all about context and what level of anxiety, worry, concern etc is appropriate to the situation.

Appropriate levels of anxiety or worry in the right context are a very good thing. I have some concerns about the risk of fire and that motivates me to install fire alarms. So far so good.

If I then become complacent just because I have installed fire alarms and leave a cigarette burning on the arm of my sofa & the house burns down. That's not so great.

If at the more extreme end I fit fire alarms and take all reasonable precautions and still lie awake at night. Then I may well need help with that. That's not the norm though and will not apply to the majority of people.

These questionnaires are the equivalent of giving a three year old a plastic toy piano and expecting the nuances of a virtuoso playing Rachmaninoff. The questions are usually too vague or ambiguous, they completely lack context and are open to different interpretations by the person filling them in and the individual assessing them. Add to that the desire of certain profession to significantly expand their "customer" base and that's pretty much where we are.

 

This is exactly it. This is my experience but I got a better understanding of my OCD and mental health problems once I had started speaking to my autism-specific counsellor.

On any “anxiety” checklist I score extremely high, similar for an OCD checklist. Although on depression checklists I hardly score any at all. I’ve had lifelong anxiety that has never budged with CBT, group therapy, hypnotherapy, counselling.. you name it, I’ve had it.

With anxiety I am super anxious that people don’t like me. I was always told I was just being anxious for no reason, I had to change my thought patterns and so on. My autism counsellor made me realise that the reason I’m anxious is because I literally cannot read expressions well. I did a test online for reading people’s expressions prior to my autism diagnosis (just for my own information), and I did awfully, despite everyone saying I am great in social situations and despite having had a lot of experience and obviously teaching myself all my life. I was given a book on facial expressions but got so frightened & anxious about the book, I never looked at it again as some of the “extreme” expressions like fright, surprise, worry, disgust, anger, all look same to me - very frightening and it upsets me.

Even online I’m always anxious that I’ve upset someone, it stays with me for a long time..because it’s not obvious in the way people talk to you, whether things are ok or not. Like it’s not upfront and you are required to interpret things. And I always rely on physical cues such as people smiling at me.. to know that they like me or that I haven’t said something wrong. So online I try to analyse “tone” and I sometimes fail. So actually on an anxiety questionnaire I score as highly anxious - but relating it back to my autism difficulties, from a young age (but not knowing it), and wanting to fit in always,it makes sense.

Or for example my issue with not knowing how something is going to work out. Anxiety is called preoccupied about the future too much. But I need to be to an extent.. because I can’t always cope when things suddenly change. And I catastrophise as well, because in real life situations I find it very hard to imagine what a realistic outcome would be. And the advice for autistic people on Autism UK is for friends/family to help them out.

My OCD is also in some sense related to trying to make sense of the world and it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Like I got a flare after someone I knew died. Or when I’m very anxious about other people because my ME is so bad so I’m scared no one will be able to look after me in the future. And even without ME I genuinely cannot cope on my own. Or when something like this virus happens. And normal “therapy” never worked for me but understanding my brain, understanding how overwhelmed I was and why I was getting these problems, via my autism counsellor - helped me more. Normal psychological therapy never understood these things. They just labelled me as extremely anxious. And actually pushed me into bad situations.

 

I get very anxious in cars. Finally I realise that I cannot see motion very well because of the ME so traffic suddenly appears from nowhere. It is a frightening thing. Now I just close my eyes (not the driver!!!) and accept that I have a visual problem, not a mental problem.

 

Presumably plants must be suffering from negative thoughts before they are infected with plant viruses.

 

Where did you get an autism counsellor?

 

The importance of kindness during COVID-19
"In this final blog of the series for Mental Health Awareness week on the theme of kindness, Professor Trudie Chalder talks about how we can learn from Commitment and Acceptance theory to help us be kind during this time."

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/the-importance-of-kindness-during-covid-19

 

Will send PM this evening

 

However, there is quite a difference between performative kindness and genuine kindness. The former can hide unbelievable suffering and cruelty when used as a weapon. Quite like lying to someone in order to gain their trust and lie more effectively to them.

It's possible to simulate the appearance of such emotions, not its substance. It always comes off wrong to keen observers, which Chalder is not.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1265523707973382145

 

I'm having a hard time deciding whether this is a low-effort content mill or a serious article.

Covid-19 Fatigue Syndrome: Finding the Unknown and Unknowable

https://pro.psychcentral.com/covid-19-fatigue-syndrome-finding-the-unknown-and-unknowable/

Serious or satire? I really can't tell.

 

Isn't this an advert by a psychiatrist who sees a new market niche?

 

Says who? The significance of sampling in mental health surveys during COVID-19

• Matthias Pierce
• Sally McManus
• Curtis Jessop
• Ann John
• Matthew Hotopf
• Tamsin Ford
• Stephani Hatch
• Simon Wessely
• Kathryn M Abel

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(20)30237-6/fulltext

hm; reads almost like a list of current practice in bPS research/treatments to me.

 

Self-awareness level: -11.

 

I guess the question is, would this . . .

be adequate to ensure capture of quality data useful for developing informed strategies to help in these situation?

I don't know anything about this but it sounds kinda vague. Is that actually sufficient to yield quality data?

 

Haven't they already decided upon the conclusion that everyone, and their pets, is so traumatised by lockdown, and the total certainty of dying if they so much as look out of the window, that they must all be suffering from profitable mental health issues?

So now what they seem to be doing is designing studies to 'prove' this so as to get funding to prove it, and how essential and invaluable they are.

 

I would worry about other kinds of bias, for example in the questionnaires, communication with participants or how researchers will interpret the data. The researchers themselves may be completely unaware of the bias affecting these aspects.

 

They can't even do that in normal times so this is either straight up delusional or a blatant scam, likely both. IAPT is a complete disaster and they've been working on that for years with zero oversight or pressure and it could not produce worse results. BPS has been around for decades and they can't even produce the lowest possible tier of evidence for anything.

That's what happens when you reward failure, it just breeds more failure and mediocrity.