ME/CFS classed as 'Acquired Neurodivergence' by some DWP Access To Work Coaching Companies

And unfortunately there's more.
Nancy Doyle (psychologist) Founder/CEO of the DWP coaching company Genius Within and co-author of the British Psychological Society Report 'Psychology at work: Improving wellbeing and productivity in the workplace' .......

Nancy Doyle, appropriates 'Post Exertion Malaise' (Sic) for her theories connecting neurodiversity, Covid, hypermobility, connective tissue and autoimmune conditions, in her Forbes article 2025. This article clearly has a 'we can help them back to work' theme:




Note that this article does not use the name Long Covid, just 'Post Covid' - and does not mention ME/CFS, but Does appropriate 'Post Exertion Malaise' (sic), with a link to the ME Association page on Post Exertional Malaise.


Nancy Doyle conflates PEM with fatigue associated with the conditions listed above, also fatigue associated with neurodiversity. This is damaging to people with ME because it conflates PEM with fatigue in multiple conditions,

She does not appear to have any comprehension that PEM is unique and is Not 'fatigue-with-anything' or 'fatigue-after-exertion'.

Nancy Doyle had to go to the ME Association page on Post Exertional Malaise to find a definition of PEM https://meassociation.org.uk/medical-matters/items/symptoms-post-exertional-malaise-pem/

She also has a touching faith in the Royal Society of Medicine.
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Forbes article:
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'Fatigue, Brain Fog And A Racing Heart — What Doctors Are Learning About Post-COVID Neurodivergence'
https://www.forbes.com/.../fatigue-brain-fog--and-a.../

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Quotes -

'A special meeting at the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) in London has proposed that neurodivergent people, who are more likely to have hypermobility, connective tissue and autoimmune conditions, have been disproportionately impacted by COVID, and that this is having a significant impact on our ability to go to school and work. The rise in neurodivergence since 2020 that is placing so much strain on education and health services, the tax payer and not forgetting the individuals themselves and their families, is indeed partly due to increased awareness and more accessible diagnostic criteria – as has already been argued.

However, this does not explain why these high rates of diagnosis are accompanied by such vastly increased rates of school absence and inability to work. If neurodivergent people have always existed, why are we only now so unwell that we can’t work?'



'There is emerging, but compelling, evidence that the overlap between neurodivergence, hypermobility syndromes, mast cell activation syndrome, postural orthostatic tachycardia and dysautonomia is not a coincidence, and has a lot to do with COVID.'

The impact of these conditions can be severe on their own, though hard to diagnose and lacking in conclusive biomarkers. They lead to chronic fatigue, serious gastro-intestinal distress, brain fog and concentration difficulties, anxiety and depression. People drop out of the labor force, education and careers are curtailed.

'In a country where productivity has dived since the financial crisis, and the health of the nation has not recovered from COVID, The Royal Society of Medicine are trying to understand the root causes, rather than paper over the end results.

Neurodivergent people are at risk of losing their support from welfare payments due to changes to the benefits system, which could underrate the presence of multiple, mid-level symptoms, even though these all add up to a significant drain.

Whilst political circles are arguing over the extent to which the population is malingering versus “genuinely” ill, this group of physicians have come above the squabbling with a potential lever to tip the system from decline to healing. Following their proposed protocols, we can believe people who say that they can’t cope, treat them and support their recovery to living a full life again.

We are at risk of a lost generation of working age people who cannot understand their fatigue, who are trying their hardest but just cannot get moving, the more they try the harder it is (see: post-exertion malaise)'
End Quote.


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The supposed 'emerging but compelling evidence' research Nancy Doyle links to in the Forbes article is

'Joint Hypermobility Links Neurodivergence to Dysautonomia and Pain'

The study does not include fatigue at all. Fatigue and 'Post Exertion Malaise' is Nancy Doyle's add-on.
One of the study authors is Jessica Eccles, of the Brighton and Sussex Medical School and Medical Advisor to the Sussex ME/CFS Society

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.786916/full?field=
From that it Sounds like someone who due to being from an area of training/expertise that has never had to deal properly with literatures or science thinks that the important part of any academic paper is the easy-read bit on impact that has nothing to do with the research and is just ad-lib suggestings to sell what might be great in the future and suggest it's applicable to the real world, but doesn't test it.

And has no clue it is reading the methodology in detail to see if the results are even worth reading and giving credence to or with x limitations.

And doesn't realise you don't just read a sunnily-worded paper that you like some terms in because they sound-alike to something you'd like to believe so can use them as a marketing strategy claiming that is 'the literature' agreeing with you.

....Except it isn't like she isn't involved in literature herself, so theoretically should know better? albeit her area seems to be biopsychosocial and coaching and organisational development.


But who funding this or allowing people to be sent to it is both capable of doing the above/any different or cares enough to point it out? - and is also in a possible where they would be allowed to, because I bet it isn't that easy if your bosses don't want to hear you

This is where the infrastructure of having a strong charity landscape that isn't half-hearted about what is actually good for patients even if you do get many early days people saying they love these fops and the issue of people claiming recovery from LP and so on being tip-toed around. I'd be intrigued what is happenning regarding the other conditions mentioned like MS too and the responses of big organisations there. ...

I certainly think there is room where I'd say it needs charities to correct this.... Except that in itself seems like a trap insinuating endorsing the premise in itself as if these should exist if a few tweaks are made etc. and even if courses were harmless the topics chosen sound so driven by reversal of understanding of the condition the whole thing is unrectifiable - the issue is that she shouldn't be offering what she is offering. People aren't struggling with 'time management' if they have an energy limiting condition that makes them incredibly ill with PEM - they are struggling with managing an illness where your body becomes unmanageable (not 'poor management of it' which is where these strategies are harmful) and you can't make energy via the magic energy tree etc. So it isn't coaching of the ill people that is needed, but correct information being provided to employers etc.
 
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