ME Sufferers Being Shamefully Let Down By Professionals (Morning Star)

Jan

Jan

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
'Wessely has consistently promoted the unsubstantiated suggestion that ME is caused or maintained by patients’ false illness beliefs and abnormal behaviour.

As a result, the integrity of patients’ experience of this devastating illness been destroyed as their testimony is deemed unreliable.

This form of “epistemic injustice” (according to medical ethics scholars Blease et al) has seen people with ME derided within the medical profession and wider society for misperceiving, exaggerating, even creating their own illness.'


http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/...efully-let-down-by-professionals#.We9H0Yhry03
 
Wow! Great article. A pity only the Morning Star is prepared to tell the truth on this.

Now if we could just get the Telegraph to publish this as a follow up to their excellent piece on Unrest...
 
I think the epistemic injustice comments come from this paper from Charlotte Blease

Epistemic injustice in healthcare encounters: evidence from chronic fatigue syndrome

  1. Charlotte Blease1,2,
  2. Havi Carel3,
  3. Keith Geraghty4


Abstract
Chronic fatigue syndrome or myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) remains a controversial illness category. This paper surveys the state of knowledge and attitudes about this illness and proposes that epistemic concerns about the testimonial credibility of patients can be articulated using Miranda Fricker's concept of epistemic injustice. While there is consensus within mainstream medical guidelines that there is no known cause of CFS/ME, there is continued debate about how best to conceive of CFS/ME, including disagreement about how to interpret clinical studies of treatments. Against this background, robust qualitative and quantitative research from a range of countries has found that many doctors (and medical students) display uncertainty about whether CFS/ME is real, which may result in delays in diagnosis and treatment for patients. Strikingly, qualitative research evinces that patients with CFS/ME often experience suspicion by healthcare professionals, and many patients vocally oppose the effectiveness, and the conceptualisation, of their illness as psychologically treatable. We address the intersection of these issues and healthcare ethics, and claim that this state of affairs can be explained as a case of epistemic injustice (2007). We find evidence that healthcare consultations are fora where patients with CFS/ME may be particularly vulnerable to epistemic injustice. We argue that the (often unintentional) marginalisation of many patients is a professional failure that may lead to further ethical and practical consequences both for progressive research into CFS/ME, and for ethical care and delivery of current treatments among individuals suffering from this debilitating illness.
Click to expand...

http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2016/12/05/medethics-2016-103691
 
The tide is definitely turning. The media becoming more and more outspoken, more and more often. Positive feedback. Probably not so much out of altruism, but some now realising their backsides will roast if they end up on the wrong side of public opinion, which is now shifting ever more rapidly.

And the SMC got a well deserved mention too. Excellent!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom