Patients’ descriptions of relation between physical symptoms & negative emotions: a qualitative analysis of primary care consultations, 2019, Bekhuis

Paywall, https://bjgp.org/content/early/2019/12/16/bjgp19X707369
Not available via Sci hub at time of posting

Post with link to open access here

 

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Gas lighting for beginners could be considered a more apt title

 

By now the belief that emotions cause disease is part of popular culture so it's not surprising some patients might describe their illness in this way. More so when the cause is unknown.

 

This is very true.

I have met cancer survivors who will talk about stress & negative emotions and the repression thereof, then getting sick and that forcing them to face up to those emotions and so recovering and now being in a much better place. No mention of the millions spent in research, specialist care, nursing support etc., etc.

Now, I'm not saying being confronted with a potentially fatal condition won't make you reassess your life, but that in itself is hardly curative.

I have also been bemused by other patients with ME or CFS diagnosis who seem to wholeheartedly embrace this type of thing. To declare that they are so badly traumatised by something that it has caused their debilitating physical symptoms. As everyone has experienced some negative emotion in life (it is a part of life) ergo their ill health has been caused by that emotion or negative experience too.

Ironically, they can make this sweeping assumption about other people, but if you question it then you are the one in denial and making a personal attack on them. Thus reinforcing their status as victim and their claim to the moral high ground.

Baffling.

 

So this and the difficulties for GP's in consultation paper have champions taking on board the problems for the BPS cabal in convincing the patient of their emotional illness. I can almost imagine them trolling through social media/forums looking for clues to how we think so as to best maneuver the patient to draw the correct conclusion about their illness.

It never stops being amazing how invested the pyschs are in their beliefs despite not any objective evidence.
Because psychology is their field they feel a need to make it relevant beyond what is reasonable. So here we are held hostage to servicing their needs. In turn IMO they prey on the desire of some patients to believe they can exert some kind of control over the illness toward being well. As mentioned above this is well exploited.

Ironically psychology could very well do a service here by helping clarify the language of and understanding of emotional states that arise from being ill. But it seems the psych's need their emotional dogma to be primary.

I hope reason prevails eventually.

 

It's quite interesting when you pose the question to the GP regarding their own personal experiences. Using reverse psychology puts them very much on the defensive.

 

And are those descriptions any different than "medically explained symptoms"? Even more relevant as Trish mentioned, comparisons with people who temporarily had "medically unexplained symptoms" that were later "explained" by people finally doing their damn job.

Of course they wouldn't be different, do they expect people suffering from the flu to break out in dance and song? So what's the point? Besides tone policing as a replacement to listening to the actual substance of what the words mean.

Weirdly enough, people calling their insurer after their house has burned down have negative emotions. Might want to check how those cause fire, I guess?

Less tripe, more reason in 2020, please and thank you.

 

A friend of mine recently told me about his own experiences, he actually had gotten a surgery (I indeed remembered it then). He told me that his associated pain only would have gone after the situation he had trouble with had resolved.

The main problem in general - and in ME/CFS in special - is, I think, that the possibilities of influences are not evaluated properly. How much of an influence in which situation is possible on a regular basis, e.g. when healing from treated cancer.

After all there is a good chance for ME/CFS though: Under the assumption that there is a mechanism of psychosomatic influence, this mechanism could be affected in ME. This at least could go for an explanation of the absolute misery reported by patients.

 

Full paper published -- open access

https://bjgp.org/content/70/691/e78