Covid-19 - Psychological research and treatment

Covid conspiracies: misleading evidence can be more damaging than no evidence at all.

• Sally McManus, Joanna D'Ardenne and Simon Wessely

https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour...dence-at-all/4E2EB003C65CADB8C2C774B114D68BEF

(SW: expert on subject of misleading evidence)

 

That's the whole of their sales pitch, right there. The rest is just waffle and padding. The prospective customers (politicians and insurance industry) prefer these barely plausible but cost-saving beliefs to be dressed up to sound sciency (makes it easier to justify to the public and the media, and a way to wriggle out if there's any criticism 30 years later), but basically everyone's on the same page. Not sure how useful it is to criticize the science here, given than none of the major players give a toss. Except the patients of course, but they're not major players. The real story is about careers, reputations, knighthoods and money. Patients are just assigned a minor part, extras if you will to provide a necessary backdrop to the stars. And what star can bear extras getting above themselves and spoiling the performance, pointing out glaring inconsistencies in the script?

 

I’ve not watched it but know he works for Crawley.
Phil Hammond outlining his approach and talks about covid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbdlMWXiHoc

 

Fluff. Sleep hygiene, healthy eating and pop psychology (usually introduced with "we know that ... "), have 5 portions of fun a day ... mindfulness ... notice the beauty of the world around you ...

Talks about acceptance and commitment, ie accepting what you can't change, but then it turns out he means accepting you can't change the daily news so don't get anxious, which apparently a third of us do. But we can change our health ...

Get some rose tinted spectacles, practise gratitude, oh FFS I can't watch any more.

At least I was able to find some irony in his fondness for clangers.

 

Thank you @TiredSam for taking one for the team there & posting your synopsis.

I was going to have a go at watching it....and decided to do something I would prefer & wouldn't annoy me instead.

 

The world, and indeed reality, is not beautiful.

It only appears to be because finding some things beautiful, desirable, etc. is hardwired into us by evolution.

Reality itself is a cruel and evil construct, probably constructed by the sort of mind that likes pulling wings and legs off of things, for amusement.

For everything that someone/thing perceives as beautiful, a trillion billion gazillion other things have had to be horrifically destroyed. Just to be able to perceive anything trillions of things are being destroyed within 'you' every second - we call it life, we call it 'beautiful' as without it we wouldn't be, but at a fundamental level, virtually everything involved is being changed, destroyed, and forced into new configurations (without consent) all the time.

The very definition of evilality

 

Posttraumatic stress symptoms and associated comorbidity during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ireland: A population based study

https://psyarxiv.com/mnbxf/

The recipe is as predictable as it's mediocre: 1) show there is "trauma" / mass hysteria from the epidemic 2) fabricate a link between trauma and long-term symptoms 3) psychogenic symptoms.

Pathologizing normal behavior is absurd. Psychiatry is out of control.

 

Thanks for the summary Sam I couldn't bring myself to watch it.

 

Is there really a Covid mental health crisis?
The coronavirus disaster has obviously brought with it an epidemic of anxiety and depression. Or has it?
BY Tom Chivers

https://unherd.com/2020/07/is-there-really-a-covid-mental-health-crisis/

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1284458280425857027


https://twitter.com/user/status/1284481099863863296

 

The people with long-lasting Covid symptoms really have no idea about the juggernaut coming their way. I feel sorry for them.

 

@PhysiosforME can you keep an eye on this please?
Thank you!

 

Brain fog, fatigue, breathlessness. Rehab centers set up across Europe to treat long-term effects of coronavirus

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/19/health/long-covid-italy-uk-gbr-intl/index.html

Despite there being no evidence of any benefits, clinicians and researchers are already using GET while promising that it works:

Will there be medical care for those made significantly worse? Community support? Financial support? Likely not. I guess the bastards just don't want to get better.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW1Gdw9D_Pk

 

I notice that the video in the previous post has been created under the auspices of the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM).

It's worth pointing out what Jonathan Edwards posted here about the RSM :

https://www.s4me.info/threads/nice-...-context-of-covid-19.15870/page-3#post-273933

 

Women and parents of under-fives worst-hit psychologically, study says

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/min...study-says/ar-BB171jgn?li=AAnZ9Ug&ocid=ASUDHP

 

Skipped to just the RMM bits... they were annoying. So what the PVFS work Simon and she have done apparently means they "know as to how to, kind of, facilitate recovery and support people" and this can be extrapolated to 'long-covid'.

"What covid's really showing us is the importance of getting the right help early on"... how has it shown us that?

They need to be "providing the correct behavioral advice is to gradually returning to activity" - how does she know what is correct?

Avoiding boom and bust..?

Prof Lynne Turner--Stokes has her own concerns about MUS patients, eg:

https://www.eapm.eu.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/EACLPP_Turner_MUS_2002.pdf

 

I'll watch this one. Of course, with Moss-Morris there as well, what could possibly go wrong?