Persistent physical symptoms not explained by structural abnormalities or disease processes: a primary care approach [..] recovery, 2026, Abrahamsen+

[Utsikt]

Did the government pay for the LP courses?

There are documented cases of NAV (the welfare authorities) paying for LP courses. Both NAV and the directorate of health have paid ~100k NOK (£7.4k) a piece for HCPs to be trained in LP. NAV have also demanded that patients tried LP in order to qualify for disability benefits.

 

[forestglip]

But that alone doesn't trigger a requirement to disclose that they make money practicing their profession. I mean, that's what she's doing. Does she really have to declare that as a conflict of interest?

I don't know if it's a requirement or not, but I found one paper where an author did disclose previously being an LP practitioner:

A systematic review of the evidence base for the Lightning Process (2021, Explore)

JA declares an historical interest in the Lightning Process as a former practitioner

 

[Turtle]

Do the two posts 21 and 22 sound like a conflict of interest @dave30th ?

 

[Trish]

ok, here's my question. Why does she have more of a conflict of interest than clinicians who also research interventions that they practice and support? They would also have a financial interest in the success of the study, and certainly a reputational interest. But that alone doesn't trigger a requirement to disclose that they make money practicing their profession. I mean, that's what she's doing. Does she really have to declare that as a conflict of interest? Certainly all the co-authors have interests involved here. In the case of PACE, the conflict was their work for insurance companies and government agencies--not the fact that they earned money doing CBT/GET.

I think Landmark has a COI because her income depends on the outcome of the trial showing the treatment works, so that introduces a potential for bias in her study design and choice of outcome measures, and interpretation of the results.

Similarly White and Sharpe have a COI related to their insurance work because that work depends on them declaring pwME mentally ill with a curable illness amenable to GET/CBT, so the company can avoid making disabilty payments. White and Sharpe don't have a COI related to their jobs as psychiatry professors, because that job is not dependent on a particular outcome of a trial.

 

[Utsikt]

White and Sharpe don't have a COI related to their jobs as psychiatry professors, because that job is not dependent on a particular outcome of a trial.

Technically they do (the entire psych field does), because if they reported and interpreted the results of their trials honestly and without bias, they would be out of a job. But it’s so far removed that it probably doesn’t qualify for a COI statement.

 

[Nightsong]

If you trial a large number of therapeutic modalities but have no particular interest in whether any of them succeed or fail you have no modality-specific conflict of interest. If you are an LP quacktitioner and make money from conducting LP courses then being involved in a study about LP is an obvious conflict of interest because you stand to gain directly & financially from a positive outcome. That is self-evident.

What intrigues me is that those whose career is predicated on one modality or category aren't usually considered to have a conflict of interest if it's not a direct, specific commercial interest. Chalder, for example, is a "professor of cognitive behavioural psychotherapy": CBT's success is her success; CBT's failure is her failure, in a way that wouldn't hold if she was a professor of psychology or psychiatry or health sciences who was conducting unbiased trials of a wide variety of interventions with no particular interest in the outcomes.

To my mind, if you build an academic career around one type of intervention or category of interventions - whether that is art therapy or CBT or exercise therapy - then you have a personal interest in its success as surely as if you were being paid as a commercial practitioner; but universities and ethics committees don't see it that way. It's an intriguing double standard.

 

[Trish]

Technically they do (the entire psych field does), because if they reported and interpreted the results of their trials honestly and without bias, they would be out of a job. But it’s so far removed that it probably doesn’t qualify for a COI statement.

I don't think that's true for White and Sharpe. If they are tenured professors of psychiatry, their jobs don't rely one one particular treatment trial outcome. If one fails they just move on to another bit of research and go on treating patients and teaching students.

Even the example of Chalder as a professor of CBT is pretty safe, because she just goes on rolling out yet another trial of CBT for another illness, or a new variation of CBT like ACT for the same illness. She has the whole of mental and physical health to screw up with her crappy treatments.

 

[NelliePledge]

Yeah LP sessions is a product that she’s got a financial interest in.