The Mind-Body Syndrome Study (2019) Maroti et al

mango

mango

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
The Mind-Body Syndrome Study by Daniel Maroti and Robert Johansson at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden is currently recruiting. (This is not a recommendation!)

It's an online treatment focused on emotions.

It's called "MBS-studien" in Swedish.
http://mbsstudien.se/

Google Translate said:
What is MBS?
The project consistently uses the abbreviation "MBS" (English: "mind-body syndrome") to designate a larger group of bodily disorders, such as migraine, IBS, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, back pain, whiplash and more. We use the term on the basis that body and mind are closely interconnected in many cases of bodily disorders. Current neurological research shows that physical symptoms can occur even in the absence of physical pathology in the body. According to this research, the symptoms occur as a result of sensitized nerve pathways in the brain. Research has shown that these nerve pathways that cause symptoms can be re-learned. Learning about these nerve pathways is exactly what this project is all about.

The purpose of the project
Psychological treatment has been developed for several forms of MBS, but we believe treatments can work even better. At present, existing medical and psychological treatment does not help enough. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to try other avenues for increased health when having bodily symptoms that affect life.

In the context of this project, we have developed an emotion-focused Internet treatment where, above all, expressive writing and meditation is used to learn about the nervous pathways that have been sensitized and thus reduce physical problems. Changes in somatic symptoms, depression, anxiety, self-compassion and emotional coping are continuously followed up during treatment. Therefore, those who participate in the study need to answer the same questions on many occasions.
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Google Translate said:
Who can participate?
The following criteria need to be met to participate in the study:

  • You have had physical symptoms for more than six months.
  • Your symptoms are not caused by tissue damage or disease such as, for example, cancer, fractures, heart disease, infections.
  • Your physical symptoms occupy your thoughts, cause you discomfort or cause you to spend an excessive amount of time and energy to deal with this.
  • The current problem has a significant negative impact on your life.
  • You are motivated to work to improve your health by participating in treatment.
  • You agree to fill in weekly forms starting Monday, September 16.
  • You have access to a computer with internet connection and the possibility to send and receive communication via a browser.
  • If you are medicating for psychological problems, the medication should have been on for at least three months and the dose should have been stable for one month.
  • You can speak, read and write in Swedish.
  • You are 18 years or older
The following criteria make it inappropriate to participate in this particular study:
  • You have substance abuse (eg alcohol or other drugs).
  • You suffer from a severe psychiatric problem and/or risk that you could commit suicide during treatment. (If you have thoughts of suicide or thoughts of harming yourself, we cannot offer you treatment. Instead, contact Vårdguiden 1177 who will advise you on where you can turn for help.)
  • You suffer from other serious medical conditions such as cancer, fractures, heart disease, infections, asthma, systemic lupus, rheumatoid arthritis or multiple sclerosis.
  • You are currently undergoing other medical or psychological treatment that may affect this treatment. If the problem you are looking for is beyond the purpose of the treatment, you will be informed of where to find suitable, alternative treatment.
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More info about Maroti's previous ME/CFS research:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Daniel_Maroti/
 
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I'm sad to see that Bragée Rehab (home of Bragée ME-center) are endorsing this study. I wonder if they will be actively encouraging their ME patients to take part, besides this post on Facebook? This is a big worry because of Maroti's apparent lack of understanding of our disease, and his habit of supporting CBT/GET, PACE etc, which has caused lots of harm to pwME :(


Google Translate said:
You who have fibromyalgia, migraines, long-term back pain and more ... Karolinska is now seeking participants for an internet study with new, emotion-focused treatment for participants who have pain that is difficult to cure, MBS, Mind-Body-Syndrome. The idea is that the brain has learned to predict threats, be vigilant and cause pain. The treatment involves training the brain to react in a different way. You can read more about it on their website.
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I'd like to hear from them why they find emotions are so important to physical health. People have been having them for quite a long time. And what does it mean if you don't succumb to poor health, that your emotions are healthy? That's kind of self-evidently not true.

Why has medicine become so goopy? And how much do we really know about emotions and what is emotionally healthy?

In other words, I think this all sounds to me like social engineering. And not in a good way (if there is such a thing).

ETA: word for clarity
 
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Snowdrop said:
I'd like to hear from them why they find emotions are so important to health.
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They talk about it a bit in some of their earlier ME/CFS studies, for example in their alexithymia study (full-text available here).

They claim that "difficulties with emotional awareness in CFS have been related to lower self-reported social functioning" and that it "has been suggested that a lower capacity to recognize emotions can interfere with the ability to initiate and maintain social relationships", "has been found to have a negative impact on level of social support [...] as well as quality of relationships, which in themselves are a buffer against distress in chronic illnesses".

Also this:
Alexithymia paper said:
Alexithymia is conceptualized as a general impairment in the capacity of emotional information, relating to both verbal and non-verbal stimuli (Lane, Sechrest, Reidel, Weldon, Kaszniak & Schwartz, 1996), and leads to disturbances of affect regulation (Waller & Scheidt, 2006). Alexithymic individuals have difficulties identifying their own or others’ feelings (Lane & Schwartz, 1987; Sifenos, 1973). In addition, alexithymic individuals show an externally-oriented thinking style and a scarcity of fantasy life (Taylor, Bagby & Parker, 1997).

It has been argued that alexithymic individuals are vulnerable to incorrectly attributing benign bodily sensations to physical disease (Kooiman, Bolk, Rooijmans & Trijsburg, 2004). Having alexithymic tendencies could make it difficult to differentiate feelings from bodily states such as tension, distress and fatigue (Waller & Scheidt, 2006).

Alexithymia has been conceptualized as a stable personality trait (Taylor et al., 1997) or as a defensive state reaction to a stressful situation such as, for example, a traumatic event, or a medical, or psychiatric illness (de Vente, Kamphuis & Emmelkamp, 2006).
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For those of you who speak Swedish, here's another article that explains their view on whether emotions can make us ill (somatization).
 
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There ought to be a point at which such nonsense in the medical sphere becomes criminal.

There is a difference between unsupported theory with an weak research base and just spouting nonsense. This definitely crosses the line.

I accept people if they choose have, to some extent, the right to try out the snake oil, but the people providing it should be clear about that being all that is on offer and have a legal obligation to demonstrate it will not cause harm and to get a signed disclaimed from participants saying they have been told it is nonsense but they want to do it anyway.
 
Maroti is... Let's just say that he's responsible for this. It's written in Swedish but hopefully google translate is good enough.

The short version is that a person he met in clinical settings showed symtoms of ME that he recognized but still decided that it was exhaustion syndrome, burnout. The person was tricked to do GET. He withheld information about that the clinical presentation pointed more to ME than a burnout and that GET could be harmful.

https://funkisfeministen.wordpress.com/2016/05/12/hoppet-finns-i-okad-kunskap/
 
We use the term on the basis that body and mind are closely interconnected in many cases of bodily disorders.
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Let me fix that right here:
We use the term on the belief that body and mind are closely interconnected in many cases of bodily disorders.
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There ya go.
Might as well keep going:
Current neurological research shows that physical symptoms can occur even in the absence of physical pathology in the body. According to this research, the symptoms occur as a result of sensitized nerve pathways in the brain.
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Let's see if we can move those curtains around a bit:
Current theological research shows that natural phenomena can occur even in the absence of physical evidence in nature. According to this research, the phenomena occur as a result of god and/or gods.
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There, much better. Own your god of the gaps, ya wankers.
 
Snowdrop said:
I'd like to hear from them why they find emotions are so important to physical health. People have been having them for quite a long time. And what does it mean if you don't succumb to poor health, that your emotions are healthy? That's kind of self-evidently not true.
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Unfalsifiable, so they'll never been proven wrong, as well as universal, so they can apply it whenever they want. Substitute for ghosts or demons for all that it matters, it's fully interchangeable.
 
mango said:
They claim that "difficulties with emotional awareness in CFS have been related to lower self-reported social functioning" and that it "has been suggested that a lower capacity to recognize emotions can interfere with the ability to initiate and maintain social relationships", "has been found to have a negative impact on level of social support [...] as well as quality of relationships, which in themselves are a buffer against distress in chronic illnesses".
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Neat. They're using the fact that we have difficulty being coherent and expressing abstract thoughts as evidence that we have trouble experiencing them, rather than communicating. Which is something we constantly emphasize but if there's something you can count on with psychosomatic medicine it's reversing cause and effect.

Also: WTH is "emotional awareness"? Oh, right, some made-up crap. As is tradition.

Having alexithymic tendencies could make it difficult to differentiate feelings from bodily states such as tension, distress and fatigue
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Oh, the irony. This is so similar to someone who is colorblind inventing an elaborate explanation for why people who claim to see "colors that don't exist" believe those colors exist and they can't get around to the real explanation because if those colors were real they would obviously see them.

The smallness of thought is excruciating.
 
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Peter Trewhitt said:
There is a difference between unsupported theory with an weak research base and just spouting nonsense. This definitely crosses the line.
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This isn't much different than the psychosocial model or FND. In fact, I can't really tell the difference. The normalization of pseudoscience has already been achieved so it's no surprise that the thing just metastasizes. And with stuff like the LP endorsed by the BMJ, all bets are off. Ghosts, demons, fairies, constellations, this, what's the difference?

And since unblinded trials with self-reported outcomes that maximize bias within the trial, change primary outcomes entirely and lower pre-registered endpoints further have also been normalized, well, there will be a lot more of this crap. This was always the natural outcome, invite made-up nonsense to the table and it will glue itself to it like a barnacle.
 
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