Simon Wessely Didn't Want His e-Mail On A Blog - Here It Is on Hole Ousia

Hi Peter, (@Hole Ousia), welcome to the forum. I hope you will stay with us and become part of our community. I was going to ask what a Sunshine act is, but decided to google it first and found this article you had published by the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/healthc...scotlands-nhs-sunshine-act-pharma-transparent

I wholeheartedly support your argument that industry funding of anything medical must be transparent. For psychiatric treatments, this clearly refers largely to funding by pharmaceutical companies that distorts treatment practice in favour of drugs and plays down the side effects.

For ME the problem of industry influence is different but just as damaging, with the health insurance industry employing some of the key proponents of the so called biopsychosocial model of ME/CFS (actually a psychosomatic model) who carried out the deeply flawed trials like PACE to gain support for their recommended directive CBT and GET treatments. Like many drugs for psychiatric conditions, exercise therapy in ME/CFS has serious and long lasting damaging side effects which the PACE researchers deny. They are employed by health insurance industry to help them deny insurance payments to ME sufferers based on this false model and failed therapies.

Apologies if you are already aware of all this - you mentioned that you are aware that the PACE trial is flawed, I wasn't sure how much you were aware of the big business interests behind its continued promotion.
 
Keela Too said:
Transparency seems to be an issue in many areas. Regarding anti-depressants - I was offered them “because they help with ME symptoms” even though I clearly was not depressed. Luckily for me others warned me of the withdrawal issues
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I actually asked to try Sertraline (Lustral) because of a recovery story in AfMEs mag 'Interaction'.
However, although starting at an incredibly low doseage (cut up the tablets supplied) I could not tolerate it at anywhere near a normal dose so gave up after a few months. Lucky escape maybe.
 
A good friend who has ME was almost killed by the mal prescribing of psyche meds because the attending doctors assumed her severe ME crash was psychosomatic and that presumption was down entirely to Wessely's paradigm that ME is an aberrant illness belief.

And my husband had a severe ME crash from overdoing things which knocked his brain off (he has a lot of ME cognitive problems) and was prescribed benzos as he couldn't sleep. He was only on them for 3 days but they had a devastating effect, severe anxiety and agitation ( something he'd NEVER EVER had before or since). It took months to resolve all these symptoms, helped with seroxat on low dose for a few months. He's never had any mental health problems, ever, only when taking these drugs. It seemed to really knock his brain for six.

It is deeply shocking to read of Wessely and co blaming reactions to drugs as being MUS but I bet the drug companies are pleased, just like the health insurance companies and ME. How very convenient.

Medical abuse masquerading as science.
 
Sly Saint said:
I actually asked to try Sertraline (Lustral) because of a recovery story in AfMEs mag 'Interaction'.
However, although starting at an incredibly low doseage (cut up the tablets supplied) I could not tolerate it at anywhere near a normal dose so gave up after a few months. Lucky escape maybe.
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Was this based on Dr David Smith's daft proposal that an SSRI (usually Prozac but also often Lustral) combined with amitriptyline (or another tricyclic) could 'cure' his patients?

It seems popular with some BPS clinics, still. However, if patients didn't pace, this miracle cure would often stop working (by his own admission) and then they were forever doomed.

It seems to me the patients were likely just quietly buzzing off their nut (as the saying goes) and ignoring the underlying problem, until they inevitably pushed too far. I wonder how much follow-up he did and how many relapsed badly later on?
 
Woolie said:
I just read Peter Gordon's letter to the Scottish Parliament here, and it gives some background to Gordon's concerns. They are largely about the overprescription of antidepressants and other psychoactive drugs in psychiatry and general medicine. He seems to be an advocate for more use of talking therapy and less of medication, especially in depression.

So his beef with Wessely is confusing, because Wessely does not seem heavily in bed with pharma, and he's obviously very into talking therapies, as evidenced by his huge personal investment in PACE. Perhaps Gordon thinks that in signing this letter to NICE, Wessely is pandering to the interests of psychiatrists more generally, hoping to give them greater freedom to prescribe what they want. And that might well be true, because Wessely is a political animal, and I guess, what serves psychiatrists also serves his own interests in being president of the RCP and his need to be a generally important person in UK medicine.

So the only issues that overlap with ours seem to involve Wessely's conduct as a person - his motivations (which are consistently political and have little to do with patient welfare) and the way in which he tries to control the narrative and manipulate people to get his own way.
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Controlling the narrative is Wessely's raison d'être.
 
adambeyoncelowe said:
Was this based on Dr David Smith's daft proposal that an SSRI (usually Prozac but also often Lustral) combined with amitriptyline (or another tricyclic) could 'cure' his patients?
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Can't remember what it was based on (this was about 15 years ago); I vaguely remember it being the story of a mother and daughter. I'd have to try and find the relevant edition; although I'm not sure if I still have it as my GP had another patient that he wanted to show it to/try it on..........another example of the danger of AfMEs uncritical reporting of such 'cures'.
 
Sly Saint said:
Can't remember what it was based on (this was about 15 years ago); I vaguely remember it being the story of a mother and daughter. I'd have to try and find the relevant edition; although I'm not sure if I still have it as my GP had another patient that he wanted to show it to/try it on..........another example of the danger of AfMEs uncritical reporting of such 'cures'.
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Absolutely. I think it's actually dangerous to publish unproven 'cures' of any kind, and a charity should seriously rethink such a strategy if it still goes on. Especially as their readers may be desperate to try anything.
 
adambeyoncelowe said:
Absolutely. I think it's actually dangerous to publish unproven 'cures' of any kind, and a charity should seriously rethink such a strategy if it still goes on. Especially as their readers may be desperate to try anything.
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Just had a mini trip down 'memory lane' with my pile of InterActions and the edition I was talking about is missing; but did spot that Dr Sarah Myhill used to reply to some of the dear doctor pages, and there was an interesting article on Charles Shepherd.

As for weird and wonderful treatments/cures, the magazines are full of them, plus a lot of still largely unanswered questions (from members) re AfMEs stance on CBT and psychological treatments/research in general.
 
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