The BDS checklist as measure of illness severity: a cross-sectional cohort study...., 2020, Fink et al

Full title: The BDS checklist as measure of illness severity: a cross-sectional cohort study in the Danish general population, primary care and specialised setting

Open access, https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/10/12/e042880

 

what is the 'BDS checklist'?

 

Confirmation bias in action.

Also peak lying with stats.

 

I meant that more literally @Andy

ie does anyone know what the checklist actually is - ie a link to it, or know what is on it?

 

From page 8 of https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2015.03.006

 

It's strange that they never bother to test for face validity - ask whether patients think the questions are understandable, easy to answer, relevant and such.

 

thnks @Andy

 

Presumably the compilers of this check list believe they have selected items that distinguish between psychological conditions and biomedical conditions, and indeed it is theoretically possible that this might on average when looking at complete heterogeneous populations be true for some people, however this does not take into account that the various symptoms listed are also symptoms of specific biomedical conditions. So even if there are people for whom this is an adequate measure of their psychological symptoms, we have no way of distinguishing them from people for whom it is a measure of biomedical symptoms.

Given there is no objective way to identify patients with BDS this is totally a boot strap operation with the researchers beliefs/prejudices being used to confirm their own beliefs/prejudices. It would be more meaningful to compare people with different psychiatric and biomedical diagnoses and comparable levels of disease burdens to see if the check list is measuring anything psychological or is simply measuring rational reporting of actual physical symptoms, but even then there is the quandary that it could simultaneously be measuring both with no way of knowing when it is measuring the psychological and when the biomedical.

 

This may as well be a questionnaire about acute or long covid, or ME. I'm sure the Long Covid folks will love it just as much as we do.

I'll always be amazed at the singular mediocrity behind the thinking that too many symptoms of illness must, MUST, suggest no actual illness. No other field of expertise could get away with thinking this absurd, literally a rejection of Occam's razor in favor of Rube Goldberg's blunt mace of bluntness, the bluntiest, least sharp object in the known universe.

 

So when you add symptom 4 the first 3 stop existing and become imaginary.

Edited to add

Oliver Sachs said that 3 migraines a week were physical but more than that was psychological.

What that really means is that physicians can't distinguish real from psychological since migraines 1 to 3 must be psychologically induced as well or is it just number 4?

There is very little logic. Maybe if they said that psychological problems can cause the physical disease that might just about be acceptable but they do not. They make a pronouncement, they treat the psychology, refusing any further physical investigations and if you don't get better it is your fault for not trying or being entrenched in your behaviour.

 

3 symptoms good. 4 symptoms baaaaad.

 

I don't know why it is but I always think that BDS stands for British Dentists (or Dental or Dentistry) Society.