David Tuller: Trial By Error: Per Fink in New York

What worries me is it's not just Per Fink. It's a discipline filled to the brim with professionals peering deep into the unconscious. I'm looking through that list of speakers and just cringing. Filled wiht plaudits from each other. Looks like there is as rampant support for MUS in Columbia, Cornell and Yale, as well as local New York hopsitals as there is in Europe. It's just the nature of our system that you won't be confronted with them unless your pcp is a joke. I'm sure they are perpetuating as much crappy research as he is, just not locking people up.
 
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It is difficult if not impossible to prove or disprove the presence of BDS or FSS or whatever else this diagnosis is called, since the main evidence for its existence as a discrete illness entity rather than just a descriptive term appears to be an absence of identified organic causes.
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It's literally impossible at any given time and with limited information.

An unknown number of people, of course, might experience symptoms that are delusional or non-organic or generated through some psychological condition.
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To some they extent they do - psychosis, delusiosn, etc. No one contests that, but this is not what the conference about. It's not about sweating mroe becuase you have anxiety. Non of those are psychosomatism.
 
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Please check out MEAction's, and Jennie Spotila's request for letters to be sent to health authorities in New York re Per Fink's presentations.

Providing continuing medical education credits for something that is non-evidenced based to say the very least, is sending the wrong message to the attendees.
 
On the same subject:

Trial By Error: The Psychosomatic Conference’s Lame Response
After I posted yesterday’s blog about Per Fink’s upcoming appearance at the fourth annual Columbia Psychosomatic Conference being held this weekend, I received the following e-mail from Columbia’s Alla Landa. She is an assistant professor of “clinical psychology in psychiatry”–whatever that means–and director of the conference.

I found her note unsatisfactory on multiple fronts, and responded accordingly. My e-mail to her follows below.
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Edit: thread here
 
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Excellent blog post!

Counted 6 talks from Germans im the program. One of the German speakers (Prof. Henningsen) has published a book with Per Fink:
Medically Unexplained Symptoms, Somatisation and Bodily Distress (from the description: "The range of disorders involved includes irritable bowel syndrome, chronic widespread pain and chronic fatigue syndrome.")

The other invited Germans also hold the same beliefs. I'm sure ME will be mentioned more often than just by Fink. It's always used as prime example to illustrate MUS/somatoform disorder/functional disorder/neurasthenia in Germany. It's also listed in the German guideline for functional and somatoform disorders. Per Fink will be one among many with the same believe system and sadly not stand out.
 
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