Opinion 'Long covid' and how medical information is causing illness: A philosophical issue affecting public health, 2023, Garner, Vogt

He should try taking a look at the wolf in sheep’s clothing psychosomatic philosophy of medicine.

 

Just to push back on the idea that medicine doesn't provide meaning, I think, depending on how you define 'meaning', medicine can provide it, and it can be a good thing. A person with MS who has been searching for a diagnosis for years and who is finally diagnosed does feel grateful to have an explanation for their symptoms, a diagnosis that opens the door to helpful treatment, and all sorts of support, including feeling part of a community going through the same experience.

We've had it suggested that one of the benefits of a diagnosis of FND is that it provides a reason for the symptoms and helps to create a community of people who can provide mutual support. It is odd that Richard Smith didn't include FND in that list of diagnoses that have been rapidly becoming more common, because the diagnostic pattern from one clinic that we have seen suggests that FND is actually one of the biggest winners out of the post-Covid conditions lottery. And odd that he doesn't seem to understand the substantial increase in SSRI use flows, as rvallee says, from

One of the things that Richard Smith fails to have noticed is that informed patient advocates are actually calling for less treatment of post-Covid ME/CFS rather than more. We don't want singing classes with the Welsh National Opera, or whoever it was getting on the bandwagon, or classes on how to breathe, or education on sleep hygiene. We don't want GET, or CBT to fix false illness beliefs, we don't think formal counselling and anti-depressants should be a first and blanket response. We don't want the RNZCGP promoting the Lightning Process as a treatment. Some of us don't even think that a network of specialist clinics providing help for Long Covid is a top priority. Because, until there are some medical breakthroughs, there are no significant treatments to offer, and the existence of clinics just provides an invitation to the clinicians to make something up.

We want people treated with empathy and without false certainty. We want research.

It's utterly preposterous to suggest that Suzanne O'Sullivan and others like her 'who specialise in treating what medicine currently labels as "functional disorders"' are 'acutely aware of the limitations of [their] medical craft' and that they are not providing a way to give meaning to the problems of their patients. To the contrary, in slapping functional disorder diagnoses on people with Long Covid, they are providing unevidenced meaning that will cause the person harm in their subsequent encounters with medical professionals.

 

A counter view to the idea that the media is creating Long Covid