The prevalence and treatment of health anxiety in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) - Jo Daniels 2018

Cheshire said:
So they eliminated people with no anxiety from their cohort, and then said that people in the cohort had unusual levels of anxiety? Am I missing something?
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That's what I was chasing down, but decided it may not be such a big deal. The score of 18 for SHAI is as they describe, just in clinical range. i.e Just out of the no-health-anxiety region. So they took a sample of people with CFS having at least some health anxiety (which I felt would likely be most people with CFS), and they concluded 42% of those had severe health anxiety.
 
chrisb said:
It is interesting to compare and contrast the present paper with this one from 1991....
It does appear that in 1991 there were alternative routes down which a biopsychosocial approach to psychiatry might have proceeded.
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This is the 'real' BPS that Wessley et al co-opted: the idea that social distress is important in medicine, not that psychiatric interventions should effectively replace biomedical ones.
 
JaimeS said:
This is the 'real' BPS that Wessley et al co-opted: the idea that social distress is important in medicine, not that psychiatric interventions should effectively replace biomedical ones.
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AKA correlation is literally the same thing as causation, amirite guys?!

That is ultimately the fatal flaw in the psychosocial nonsense: it can all be perfectly explained by Occam's razor. Sick people behave like sick people, get over it. This is exactly what you expect to find and just because YOU don't understand that there are extraordinary circumstances does not change the fact that there are.

I like to compare it to the Trump error, because this is something narcissists do regularly: "nobody knew X" because they just found out about it and assume if they didn't know then no one could possibly know because they are solipsists. Wessely has written several times about this, that because HE could not find a cause than no one in the history of ever would find a cause so might as well work on all those weird correlations that can be so easily confused as a cause because it makes for a great career and a knighthood and all this fancy stuff even though his hands are overflowing with blood.

Uh, rant. I'm so sick of this shit. People are ruining my life and I can't do anything about it. And no, I'm not anxious about it. I'm mad and angry and want Justice with a huge capital J.
 
rvallee said:
And no, I'm not anxious about it. I'm mad and angry and want Justice with a huge capital J
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There are few more effective tools for controlling and directing a population than to imply they're 'just crazy'. They bristle in outrage at the suggestion, and they've proved you right. They subside into politeness and deference, and you've fixed the problem. We're far from the only ones.

While not everyone will react to this situation by feeling depressed or anxious, that would be a totally normal, reasonable response.

I had more of this but I had to stop here before I worked myself up!
 
Another issue is that the secondary aim is predicated on the idea that health anxiety (as defined with the questionnaire) is maladaptive in sick people.

Surely, if you are sick then it's not only very normal but also quite good to be somewhat worried about it and take some steps to stop being sick?

If you have significant symptoms lasting for some time, it seems to me that a degree of concern about your health is likely to prompt some actions that are wise and potentially helpful (including getting second opinions from doctors).
 
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