Peter White (ed.) 2005, Biopsychosocial Medicine: An integrated approach to understanding illness

Peter White (ed.) 2005: Biopsychosocial Medicine, An integrated approach to understanding illness. Oxford University Press

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/biopsychosocial-medicine-9780198530343?cc=de&lang=en&#

Links to this conference and book have been posted on different threads, e.g. here:

https://www.s4me.info/threads/the-bigger-picture.8683/page-2#post-153599

The linked Twitter thread by @maxwhd includes extract from the conference's discussions and final discussion which I thought deserved its own thread.

I copied the twitter thread into a PDF (see attached file) Edit: But haven't checked the book so don't know from which chapters and how accurate the excerpt is.

The book contains the final discussion (chapter 13 - "How to overcome the barriers"), but also discussions of individual presented papers.

Just two snippets here:

Discussion(s) (excerpt by @maxwhd via http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1s19b2i)

 

How times change. Quoted from above:

Wessely: Cancer patients do not lobby for psychologists because they believe that psychological factors are why they developed cancer in the first place (which is certainly progress given that in previous times there have been scientists who have made those erroneous claims). They do so because they feel that it is safe and permissible to engage with psychological therapies precisely because their doctors do not hold with psychosomatic theories of cancer. Once the physical basis of disease is established, then one can explore the psychological in safety, but not before.

From Newsleter 8b of HealthWatch October/December1991 https://www.healthwatch-uk.org/images/Newsletters/Number_8b.pdf This organisation, originally the Campaign against Health Fraud, had amongst its members Simon Wessely, and Iain Chalmers as well as Caroline Richmond. It is not clear for how long Charles Shepherd was a member. One rather hopes it was not for long.

The world turned upside down: it is now very acceptable to suggest that cancer is caused by psychological factors, but heresy to suggest that chronic fatigue is even partly due to it. HealthWatch believes that until we can destigmatise psychiatry (and cure cancer), patients will continue to be exploited.

One might have expected this from the journalists involved. The quality of the thinking is surprising for the supposedly eminent medical and medico-legal people involved.

Such absurd biases.

 

The incompetence of these people is genuinely offensive, they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about, they may as well be talking about the humors for all that it matters. I have never encountered anyone so thoroughly unskilled at their job and my profession isn't even licensed.

Seriously if you made a comedy sketch of "very serious people" talking about angels dancing on a hairpin you would only have to substitute a few words in this gibberish and it would just work. All fluff, zero substance.

 

Same shit as in "the Chronic Fatigue & Fibromyalgia Syndromes. The American Psychiatric Association Publishing Textbook of Psychosomatic Medicine and Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry" [1st ed.(2005) kap.26,p.555-575]

As you can find the reference to in the first half of the blog post, under notes (notater)
7aug2019, På ME-fronten: Alice, Mad Hatters and down the Rabbithole | https://totoneimbehl.wordpress.com/...en-alice-mad-hatters-and-down-the-rabbithole/

Edit: The pdf file apparently opens directly! yey

 

Thanks for posting!

This part is interesting:

And then Peter White argues that his form of GET was a bit different, it was educational and aimed at changing patients' beliefs (sentence highlighted in red).

 

Th conference may be helpful to show that they have no real idea what they are talking about, though I wonder if I ever would have the patience to got through this.

It´s at sight completely absurd, one even would not need to discuss this.

• If this would be true, then one may expect that little children from freshly immigrated families would fit themselves not that completely well into the new society, as it indeed can be seen.
• That behaviour in the range of what the biological mechanisms have to deal with, will lead to diseases, is against every experience and common sense. Might be better to look at mechanisms.
• She tries on something that contradicts one of their own major hopes for improvements, which they nevertheless promote with verve or so. This shows that there is no precision in their handling or forthcoming handling, but they are staggering around. There is indeed no compelling theory to come across, is it?

Being together with such thinking is merely like being in a cage with wild animals.

 

Lewin alone called out the bad science, possibly unaware that it's primarily bad faith.

 

It's noteworthy that Wessely admitted GET is just another form of CBT.

This is obvious to anyone who actually has an understanding of exercise physiology and has looked at the protocol(s), yet many (especially medical practitioners who should know better) think that GET is about exercise and gaining fitness.

 

This x 100.

 

Just saw that the book also includes:

The biopsychosocial approach: a note of caution (Chapter 5)
by George Davey Smith

A scan of the book chapter is available open access here:

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/media-library/sites/integrative-epidemiology/documents/The biopsychosocial approach - a note of caution.pdf

(on the list of working papers provided by the University of Bristol's MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit )

The book chapter is on my reading list and probably will stay there for at least a couple of months.

Anyone else read it? Does 'caution' mean it is cirtical of the BPS approach per se or is it only a pseudo-caution?

And how is Davey Smith connected to the BPS proponents?

(Tagging @Woolie to suggest to add/ replace the link to the book chapter in the forum library: https://www.s4me.info/threads/critiques-of-psychosocial-illness-explanations.213/#post-3213
-- the pdf linked above is open access, no sign up necessary.)

 

Just skimming but overall pretty rational. Haven't seen anything related to the topics we are used to, it focuses on ischemic heart disease and peptic ulcers, but it's interesting to see just how identical the obsolete BPS model of peptic ulcers is to the current model of MUS. Literally exactly identical, not even bothering with altering anything. I mean this seriously: it is exactly the same substance, same claims, same arguments, same dubious experiments, literally the exact same thing top to bottom.

Some interesting passages but it's a graphic scan, can't select text. "General paralysis of the insane" sounds exactly like hysterical paralysis, so MS. Mentioning how this old concept is identical to the BPS perception of peptic ulcers. So literally there is only one thing and it's remained identical since at least 1850. It's the exact same general concept applied to multiple problems, never deterred by failure.

Actually lots of discussion over the case of peptic ulcers and how H. Pylori overturned everything. Despite overturning everything, absolutely nothing changed, the substance of this ideology has remained identical for well over 150 years. No lessons were learned other than lying more effectively, today's BPS practitioners could converse with their counterparts of 150 years ago without any gap in knowledge between either group.

 

Here's an older discussion of that chapter:

https://forums.phoenixrising.me/thr...f-caution-george-davey-smith-2005-2006.38371/

 

Skimming through this and Wessely responded: https://books.google.ca/books?id=chwtWAt76JoC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA99#v=onepage&q&f=false. Not much to say, as usual.

 

General Paralysis of the Insane was the tertiary phase of syphilis.

The infection begins with a painless sore then there can be a rash but then there is a latent phase which can last decades until there are neurological and psychotic symptoms. In 1850 it was forgivable not to understand the physical process but not now.

 

Ah, interesting. Somewhat understandable before the germ theory of disease.

But in the text it's interesting that it was discussed over how nearly identical the framing with peptic ulcers was to that general paralysis of the insane, that the names could be substituted perfectly in the descriptions. Pretty ironic that it turned out that peptic ulcers are also caused by bacteria. If ironic meant "HOLY HELL YOU KEEP DOING THE EXACT SAME MISTAKE OVER AND OVER AGAIN PLEASE STOP THAT", anyway.

Because medicine is still doing that exact same mistake as we speak, using the exact same arguments, illogical unreasoning, logical fallacies and general paralysis of the thinking mind.

 

thanks for the tag, @MSEsperanza. I've updated that thread to include the new link.

 

probably posted elsewhere but found Prof Peter (Denton) White on the UK government website:

https://www.gov.uk/government/people/peter-white

(there is a button "is there something wrong with this page" for anyone who fancies their chances of getting it amended)

 

It's an interesting idea that exercise intolerance causes and maintains CFS. Surely it is a symptom. Not only is their confusion about body and mind, but also about cause and effect.

 

Apologies for this bit of humour which not everyone will get.

When I hear that name Peter Denton White I can hear in my mind

. . . Harcourt Fenton Mudd, what have you been up to? Have you been Thinking*? *(in the original it was drinking)