Toward the emancipation of “medically unexplained” and energy-limiting conditions..., 2024, Hunt

[JohnTheJack]

Toward the emancipation of “medically unexplained” and energy-limiting conditions: Contesting and reimagining psy through the lens of feminist disability studies
Joanne Hunt

Abstract
Indictment of hegemonic psy construction of the “ideal” subject, and its marginalisation of the Other, is common to both feminism and (critical, feminist) disability studies. However, feminist literature largely lacks both an appreciation of the gendered, intersectional nature of disability as constituted and propagated by psy, and an exploration of how integrating disability as a category of analysis can strengthen critical feminist endeavours to transform psy.

This article seeks to address this gap, espousing a feminist disability studies lens and taking as its subject energy-limiting chronic illnesses that are socially and clinically othered, notably via a strategic positioning of these illnesses as medically unexplained and recoverable through compliance with psy knowledge regimes.

After discussing how power-laden gendered, dis/abled, and more fully intersectional constructions of the idealised subject, bolstered by psy–corporate–state agendas relating to welfare reform, have oppressively shaped dominant representations and practices in this arena, I consider how psy (chiefly, psychotherapy) might benefit from integrating thinking from within feminist disability studies.

I conclude that feminist disability studies can help transform psy in an emancipatory direction through reimagining disability in a socioculturally and biopolitically cognisant, embodied, and maximally inclusive manner.

The case of “medically unexplained” and energy-limiting chronic illness exemplifies this assertion.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09593535241267091

 

[Hutan]

I struggle with the language that I guess is part of this academic field, but there are interesting ideas e.g.

Accordingly, the unevidenced suggestion in (bio)psychosocial discourse that people with contested illness, most notably ME/CFS, “gain” from being ill through obtaining attention, financial support, or relief from work (see Hunt, 2023a; Kennedy, 2012) mirrors psy narratives constructed around alleged hysterical–neurasthenic women (Showalter, 1987). Gendered power/knowledge regimes extend to alleged “treatments”: cognitive–behavioural and graded exercise therapy can be understood as informed by hegemonic masculine ideals, including emotional stoicism, rationality, and self-sufficiency (Hurst & Genest, 1995).

The 'you are making a big deal over nothing and seeking attention, dear, just get on with things as a man would'. I do wonder if this plays into the lower rates of diagnosis of these types of conditions in men, partly due to men not offering themselves up for it (and perhaps having a higher rate of attempted self-medication with alcohol and drugs) and partly to some doctors not being so keen to apply the diagnosis to men (and so looking harder for alternative diagnoses).

And the 'you aren't thinking right, dear, let me tell you how you should be thinking' treatments.

Particularly pertinent in the case of illness positioned as medically unexplained (and notably, ME/CFS), it has been argued that a network of alliances implicating academia (largely, psychiatry), the UK government, and disability insurance industry with media complicity—a psy–corporate–state complex (Hunt, 2023b)—have played a central role in reconstructing (bio)medical conditions as undeserving (self-imposed, exaggerated, or feigned) psychosocial phenomena (e.g., Hunt, 2022; Kennedy, 2012; Rutherford, 2007). At the centre of this network is a variant of (bio)psychosocial model espoused by U.S. insurance giant Unum in countering insurance claims, later adopted by the UK government and assimilated into clinical practice with psy support (Jolly, 2012; Rutherford, 2007; Stewart, 2016).

Critical inquiry has uncovered how this reconstruction of health conditions as undeserving sought to counter a trend of increasing claims for state sickness benefits and private income protection from the late 1970s, notably from people with conditions lacking established biomarkers, such as ME/CFS. Exploiting the “subjective” nature of such conditions, and framing them as recoverable via psychosocial therapies, would facilitate exemptions from state benefits and private insurance claims, seek to reduce medical care and biomedical research costs, and coerce disabled people into the labour market (Rutherford, 2007; Stewart, 2016). This (bio)political project has deprived disabled people of state support, appropriate biomedical care, and social accommodations, wreaking multifarious hams [sic ] (Clifford, 2020; Stewart, 2016). More recently, these agendas have been applied in discussing the trajectory of long Covid and other energy-limiting conditions (Hunt, 2022; Hunt, 2024b).

Whilst gendered and dis/abled power relations are recognised within the contested illness arena, these relations have historically not been considered in intersection. A notable exception is the work of feminist disability studies scholar and Canadian woman with ME/CFS, Susan Wendell (1989, 1996, 2001). Wendell recognised that power/knowledge hierarchies within healthcare are both dis/abled and gendered, using the term “epistemic invalidation” to describe systematic disbelief toward the embodied experiences of people (disproportionately, women) with chronic illness (Wendell, 1996). In near-parallel to research on energy-limiting conditions (e.g., Evans et al., 2023; Hale et al., 2020), Wendell recognised that chronic illness typically defies prevalent impairment and disability stereotypes, those Wendell described as “healthy disabled and permanently and predictably impaired” (Wendell, 2001, p. 21), creating a gendered (dis)ablism depriving people of disabled identity and resulting in “social abandonment” (denial of social protections and accommodations) that furthers marginalisation (Wendell, 1996).

People with chronic illness are not seen as legitimately disabled, not worthy of social support. It's hard to be seen as an 'inspirational disabled person' in the manner of the wheelchair athlete, when you lack energy.

For example, narratives on hysteria and neurasthenia are contended to have protected White, Anglo-American, middle-class, male privilege and imperialist urges (Jung, 2021). Both diagnoses (when understood as neuroses) were considered to represent a predominantly White, middle-class women's disease, since racially minoritised and working-class women were considered less civilised and thus less susceptible to the alleged consequences of modern civilisation relative to White, middle-class women (Jung, 2021). These oppressive yet unsubstantiated truth-claims, together with the systems of power from which they emerged, have likely left a harmful legacy in clinical practice. Whilst women are more likely to be diagnosed with contested illness such as ME/CFS and long Covid, racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically minoritised groups are less commonly diagnosed, despite indications that such conditions may be more prevalent among these groups (Cohen & van der Meulen Rodgers, 2023; Jason et al., 2009).

The idea that 'you don't see ME/CFS in poor countries, people there just have to get on with things', leading on to the idea that tough love is what is required in response to ME/CFS. It's a variant on the 'you don't see ME/CFS much in men, because they typically just get on with things'. I think things were a little more complicated with neurasthenia and men initially, it almost being a badge of honour resulting from thinking too much, which doesn't invalidate the idea of narratives protecting white, relatively wealthy males, but perhaps could have been discussed more. I think the idea that ME/CFS is the disease of women whose aspirations are bigger than their capabilities could also have been included here.

 

[Hutan]

Second part of the paper - what 'psy practitioners' can do to be better and actually help. My comments here aren't necessarily a summary of what is said but my response and ideas of actions that might flow from the points made.

Reimagining practice
Since oppressive power relations are central to harms sustained by people with contested illness, power relations should represent a central concern for psy practitioners, following the ethos of feminist therapies. In what follows, I incorporate findings from a nonexhaustive literature review examining power within the context of psychotherapy and disability (Barshay, 1994; Cameron, 2020; Chrisler, 2001; Halacre, 2020; Ingham, 2018; Kaschak, 2001; Marecek, 2017; Olkin, 2017; Prilleltensky, 1996, 2009; Reeve, 2002, 2014), further filtering this through my experience as a disabled woman practitioner and service-user.

The personal is political

practitioners should thus address the detrimental personal cost of oppressive power systems. However, disability is underrepresented among acknowledged sources of oppression and inequity in psychotherapy theory, practice, and training, even within feminist approaches, and this concern has been partially attributed to underrepresentation of disabled people within the professions

be aware of oppressive power systems; assist people with personal experience of chronic illness to be counsellors

A notable exception here is disability-affirmative therapy (D-AT; Olkin, 2017), developed by Rhoda Olkin, a psychologist living with early onset disability, and designed as a template to (re)structure therapists’ existing practice in a disability-affirming direction.

In these cases, providing space for discussion of body/mind–society, personal–political interplays, typically features as a cornerstone of emancipatory practice, countering psy's individualising, responsibilising tendencies. Practical examples of creating this space from my own practice include interpreting the aforementioned stigmatisation of people with contested illness (as demanding, self-indulgent, lacking work ethic, and so on) as a collective internalisation and reproduction of normate logic, and reframing experiences of feeling pressured into psychosocial therapies and blamed for nonimprovement (e.g., ME Association, 2015) as an artefact of welfare conditionality, psycho-compulsion, and generalised disregard for minoritised groups’ agency (see Clifford, 2020; Showalter, 1987; Stewart, 2016). Whilst the term “psychopolitical validity” (Prilleltensky et al., 2009) has been coined to assess how well psychotherapies or psychological theories account for personal–political interplays, there is little evidence of such therapies or theories within the contested illness arena (Hunt, 2023a).

Review contested illness programmes and documents for stigmatisation. Move from victim blaming to helping people cope with a debilitating disease and stigmatisation.

Critically reflexive self-development work is necessary for practitioners to understand how they internalise oppressive power relations and reproduce them within the therapeutic encounter or in training environments

Therapists should examine the prejudices they hold.

Valorising marginalised lives

This can be facilitated by truly heeding service-users’ testimonies; in other words, by valorising marginalised lives.

Listen to people with first-hand experience. Acknowledge the courage it often takes to keep coping with a contested illness.

Therapeutic work may then involve supporting service-users in positively redefining or reclaiming concepts that have been used to disempower them, as exemplified through the feminist disability rethinking of “dependency” and prizing of interdependency as integral to the human condition (see Bê, 2020; Garland-Thomson, 2002). In practice, this may involve supporting service-users to assert their right to request disability/impairment-related support and disability-affirmative healthcare, and to seek out support networks with other minoritised persons

Everyone is dependent. White, Sharpe et al, have been supported by taxpayer funds, by charitable donations, just as people on welfare benefits have been. A question is, which side produced the most benefit to mankind? Decoupling personal worth from the size of one's income. Supportive therapy includes facilitating people to make contact with others going through the same things and to create their own support networks.

Egalitarian relationships

Given the harms wrought by oppressive power relations in the contested illness arena, it is reasonable to contend that any truly therapeutic relationship should ascribe to mutuality. Whilst psychotherapists should not seek to “treat” impairment effects, suffering traceable to psycho-emotional disablism (disempowering relations with the self, others, and social structures) can and should be addressed

Power differentials can be further moderated through transparency over contracting and the therapeutic process, alongside open case-notes policy or even cowriting of notes where institutional policies allow

Be open about what the therapeutic process is aiming to do and how it will do it. Open case notes.

Here, therapists understand mutuality as a moral endeavour and seek growth-fostering connections on a person-to-person level ... without seeking refuge in professional qualifications, manualisation, or the expert persona. This suggestion is motivated by my practice experience, supported to some degree by patient survey data (ME Association, 2015), which suggests that many people with contested illness value personal qualities of the therapist (such as empathy and honesty) above other aspects of therapy.

What the quote says.

Finally, whilst the feminist emphasis upon mutuality recognises that therapy is a coproductive endeavour, this comes with caveats. For example, this should not be conflated with therapists expecting service-users to educate them, a scenario which furthers disempowerment (Halacre, 2020). Moreover, mutuality should not be conflated with placing responsibility on service-users for therapeutic outcomes. This dynamic is all too common within therapy in the contested illness arena and risks victim blaming

And this. It brings to mind AfME's implicit suggestion in the care plan template that people with ME/CFS should be writing their own care plan and signing up to unevidenced ideas of personal failings. And of course the idea that if you don't recover, you haven't tried hard enough and possibly don't even want to get well.

 

[Hutan]

There was a lot here that I found worth thinking about. I'm not the target audience - I think therapists would find the paper worth reading, and I'd like them to read it. I wonder if the academic language would be off-putting, as it was to me. Perhaps the author could consider writing a magazine article for a relevant profession - I'd love to see something on this in a BACME publication! I hope the author is invited to speak to conferences of therapists, again, this is the type of stuff that should be heard at a BACME conference and could go some way to counteract the paternalistic therapeutic approaches of the likes of Peter Gladwell.

I wonder what our members who counsel people with ME/CFS think. @Joan Crawford?

 

[bobbler]

Second part of the paper - what 'psy practitioners' can do to be better and actually help. My comments here aren't necessarily a summary of what is said but my response and ideas of actions that might flow from the points made.




be aware of oppressive power systems; assist people with personal experience of chronic illness to be counsellors




Review contested illness programmes and documents for stigmatisation. Move from victim blaming to helping people cope with a debilitating disease and stigmatisation.


Therapists should examine the prejudices they hold.


Listen to people with first-hand experience. Acknowledge the courage it often takes to keep coping with a contested illness.


Everyone is dependent. White, Sharpe et al, have been supported by taxpayer funds, by charitable donations, just as people on welfare benefits have been. A question is, which side produced the most benefit to mankind? Decoupling personal worth from the size of one's income. Supportive therapy includes facilitating people to make contact with others going through the same things and to create their own support networks.




Be open about what the therapeutic process is aiming to do and how it will do it. Open case notes.


What the quote says.


And this. It brings to mind AfME's implicit suggestion in the care plan template that people with ME/CFS should be writing their own care plan and signing up to unevidenced ideas of personal failings. And of course the idea that if you don't recover, you haven't tried hard enough and possibly don't even want to get well.

There is something to be said about bringing up and getting therapists (and laypersons) to explore and admit to themselves where they might not want to ‘lose’ the feelings that power differential gives them. so that once it’s clear that is not justified it can be hard to let go of can be explained in terms that are about the therapist and not the victim.

I think the cognitive dissonance filling when the false beliefs was debunked for example with BACME has been to knee jerk another way the same relationship can be replicated and justified rather than appropriate soul searching and looking at ways to put respect back into the relationship.

I agree it starts from a project point of view with putting qualified and experienced patients in charge of design and info from the start (rather than feedback at end being limited to ‘non-critical’) . There is obviously a stage going on with professions before this to make them capable of doing their part in this.

I think the point about conditionality for benefits and a treatment that only doesn’t work if patient wasn’t good enough is important. It doesn’t make sense as an ide other than wishful thinking and has been so damaging to allow people to hold those views and allow themselves to be used as weapons over peoples survival .

agree on the destignatising materials and therapy but it goes further than that. We can’t have denial of peoples history they were put through just because those involved in it don’t want to see it/talk about it 'as it is' because it feels uncomfortable. As that harms all over again. And at some point there does have to be a locus of accountability and letting people have their truth even tho it’s uncomfortable fir those who caused those consequences- without accusations they are bad people for saying it is what it is.

it’s an uncomfortable and inappropriate situation that people damaged by something are expected to return to those same people for support with the damage they did.

EDIT: I have doubts that without someone stepping in in the early days that this even makes sense - can any of us, in practice actually manage to 'react well' when someone effectively is saying something that means we are to blame, and by well that needs to be far beyond normal counselling stuff, but if they are responsible it surely is like one of those carefully managed meetings between 'doer' and person living with consequences because the victim needs so much from said 'doer' that isn't also / replaceable with the role of what a psych normally would be which is 'independent'.

It becomes dangerous ie a new level when those people aren’t being required to all go through deprogramming and reprogramming ie a period of acknowledgment. Otherwise the victim is dealing with the therapists’ issues instead of being supported and the risk of the dangling carrot of the therapists old power and entitlements tempting them to say ‘they don’t know what they are talking about/it wasn’t really that that harmed them’ is just too huge.

surely it HAS to be oversighted by new people who won’t be tempted to take advantage and won’t feel insulted or take it personally because it wasn’t them doing it.

 

[Joan Crawford]

There was a lot here that I found worth thinking about. I'm not the target audience - I think therapists would find the paper worth reading, and I'd like them to read it. I wonder if the academic language would be off-putting, as it was to me. Perhaps the author could consider writing a magazine article for a relevant profession - I'd love to see something on this in a BACME publication! I hope the author is invited to speak to conferences of therapists, again, this is the type of stuff that should be heard at a BACME conference and could go some way to counteract the paternalistic therapeutic approaches of the likes of Peter Gladwell.

I wonder what our members who counsel people with ME/CFS think. @Joan Crawford?

I shall take a look.

 

[Joan Crawford]

I think the language will stop a lot if people accessing it. However, a lay version in BACME, BABCP, BACP would have value.

Centring this around contested illnesses is I suspect not terribly helpful as they generally aren't. Or not until the psychosocial brigade decide to include a condition on a random list of MUS, PUPS, FND (add name du jour). In a way this, I think, gives power away to those that oppress, if you get my drift. By in some way going part way to agree the conditions are contested to some degree. Maybe I'm making too much of that point. I recall a robust discussion I had a decade ago with now retired research supervisor on this point....

Not got time to spend more on this today. I can come back.

As an aside, I and three psychologist colleagues are leading the development of a good practice guideline for psychologists working with pwME for the British Psychological Society (BPS). This includes a writing group of 16, including 2 non psychologists as experts by experience (EbEs). And many of the group of 16 psychologists are EBEs too. And several clinical leads from NHS services. To date no push back from psychosocial brigade, a few who are members of the BPS and are HCPC registered psychologists. It'll be out in 2024. We will cover a lot if these points in easier to access language.

 

[rvallee]

And the 'you aren't thinking right, dear, let me tell you how you should be thinking' treatments.

Reading the quote above, I do see a huge overlap in misogynistic language from the dark sewers of the bro Internet about how everything they do about women is about 'protecting' them. It definitely shares the same roots of "I know what's best for you and will do everything in my power to control you".

As in I've been following the alt-right and other bigoted social media crowds for years, and they blend seamlessly on a social media feed along with the patronizing biopsychosocial attitudes. At their core it's the same politics of coercion and amplification of fake concerns.

And sometimes I see women caught in that politics complain about the misogyny, and the hostile reaction to it also reminds me of biopsychosocial bros. How they always claim to be all about helping us and simply know better.

Not that surprising. Bigotry is bigotry, whatever the excuses people give themselves to give way to their control fantasies. Whether they are random people or eminent MDs makes zero difference, the behavior and motivations the exact same: themselves. It's all about giving themselves more power to act out their delusions and their need to control others.

 

[Hoopoe]

People should be careful when approaching lived experience with ideology, because it's easy to fall into behaviour of selfishly trying to impose your ideology on vulnerable people who have the "wrong beliefs", defining their experience for them, while claiming to be motivated by a desire to help.

 

[Nightsong]

I have not read the full paper but from the abstract & snippets Hutan posted it is clear that the author does not fully understand the history of neurasthenia. Throughout the history of the condition there are many indications that the diagnosis was given to underprivileged patients. There were certainly physicians who suggested it was associated with overwork in educated professionals, with "civilisation", with the American lifestyle, etc but there is also plenty of evidence of the diagnosis having been made in the working classes, in the institutionalised & otherwise underprivileged groups from its emergence. While Beard was talking about treating overworked businessmen one of the earliest reports of neurasthenia came from the superintendent of an asylum describing cases in the wives of small-scale farmers.

The relationship with feminism - well, I'd also point out that there have been a number of high-profile feminists who have denigrated pwME (or those who have lived with historical disputed illnesses) in the worst possible terms. In the debate/lectures with Showalter and SW at the Royal College of Physicians in 1998 she made him seem almost benevolent by comparison & her suggestion that doctors "firmly discredit" our illness undoubtedly fell on many influential ears. And just look at the feminist-centric biographies of people like Alice James and how she was described... unfortunately feminist thought is no bulwark against bigotry towards pwME.

The use of psychosomatic power and influence to further state or corporate objectives is certainly worthy of far deeper exploration - the intensity of psychosomaticians' efforts to discredit and undermine the patients associated with the Australian "RSI epidemic" (probably just a period of increased awareness of work-related injury & of ergonomics rather than an epidemic per se) of the 70s & 80s comes to mind here.

Despite rolling my eyes at the over-jargonified language I think it's worth adding to my ever-lengthening reading list...

 

[Ash]

I think the idea that ME/CFS is the disease of women whose aspirations are bigger than their capabilities could also have been included here.

This brings to mind the whole medical social category of ‘the malinger’.

A ‘malinger’ being someone who would have to do hard labour poorly paid or unpaid. Someone whose work was unpleasant or monotonous.

So while anyone could be called a malinger for avoiding work of any kind or have an episode of malingering ascribed to them the term is meant for the working classes paid and unpaid for the oppressed classes for allocation by the ruling and professional classes. Or perhaps for men for their wives.

The maligner is the rebel. The person who says no. I will not submit to this fate of punishing work for little reward. I will find a way out.

Or they are the enslaved person or the low paid exploited labourer who is made sick by the poverty of their living and working conditions and who their oppressors further punish for this sickness rather than consent to alleviate such suffering.

Finding it expedient to deny sickness born of oppression its existence. To blame instead the person whose body tells of its existence, for being despicable of character. For daring to report their pain and or failing to work through it to withstand all blows.

I am quite certain many upper class people use this term for each other not infrequently. I certainly heard this before. It tends to be said with a little tongue in cheek. Just as they might also refer to not having brush their hair that morning as ‘I looked like a homeless person’.

They will also use it against each other and their own children. As a form of discipline if they’re feeling mean and scornful. But it’s not meant for use against the future doctors and stockbrokers of the world. Not really and truly.

You might be a well connected upper class white man in your youthful, but not too youthful, age and have your life absolutely trashed by the attachment to your being of the labels ME CFS and never far behind in spirit or physical form, maligner.

That this terrible trap wasn’t constructed with you in mind will not necessarily be enough to save you from it. Got to sacrifice a few, to maintain status quo.

 

[bobbler]

I think the point about conditionality for benefits and a treatment that only doesn’t work if patient wasn’t good enough is important. It doesn’t make sense as an ide other than wishful thinking and has been so damaging to allow people to hold those views and allow themselves to be used as weapons over peoples survival .

Another point to flag here is the idea that the real 'therapy/re-education/technique' often isn't the model on the piece of paper.

I'll use the example of behavioural psychology/therapy in its classic form (a lot of people also don't realise that one 'side' of CBT originated from the 'cognitive therapy' roots, where the other from a very different thing indeed which is behavioural therapy): basic punishment and rewards, and things like instrumental conditioning.

It's a pretty well-known cliche that in the world of mental health if you want to 'get out' then you have to 'act right' and 'tick the boxes', not 'heal'. ie the two can be mutually exclusive, there's a bit more going on in the situation.

I'm sure there are some situations where there is something good happening, but it needs to be flagged that at the bottom of lots of 'results' are things that are far more powerful to a situation than the sales pitch written on the piece of paper to the third party.

Anyway, whoever was doing therapy or the like under a system where all of the coercion underpinning everything for the old CFS treatment paradigm was prevalent wasn't doing anything 'voluntary' at all. And certainly not based on evidence where it was. And it also turned out to not be therapeutic either. They also need to understand that saying something didn't work came at life-changing penalties.

That's a significant admission that needs to happen.

It's really terrible when you think of what was contained in that, forced in by (perceived and real) threats. Literally like conversion courses and having to, in the most dualist sense possible, deny your own body's needs with your own eyes, pain receptors and brain. Because of other people's crazy beliefs forcing you through it can make your mind change your body, or because they think it's a mind issue and nothing was wrong in the first place so you have to also admit 'you've false beliefs'.

They all know how awful that is and how harmful it is, even if it was right, because none of them now proven wrong want to go through the process even of getting rid of what are their own real false beliefs. They need to imagine what it was like when it was directed as personal towards yourself instead of them having to do the equivalent of getting rid of bigotry to others, which really shouldn't need to be cuddled as tightly and isn't actually as vital to your own identity and functioning.

And as it worsens that to take responsibility for it as your own failing. What a perfect con to be harming people and stopping them complaining by imbuing a bit into that therapy making them think it's their own fault. That was taking advantage in the most unethical way possible.



This is really, truly, a MASSIVE scandal - I don't understand why given the history of past ones in psychology this particular one isn't getting that level of acknowledgement, because it skirts the huge issues of ethics, informed consent, harm, coercion and so on.

 

[bobbler]

well this is well-timed?

Just came through via email from the ME Association: Help the British Psychological Society develop good practice guidelines for ME/CFS - The ME Association

 

[bobbler]

This has reminded me of the conundrum regarding biopsychosocial and the BPS acronym we use here for it: meaning the psychosomatic people.

If the British Psychological Society (BPS) are something we are needing to talk about here - and I think it is relevant - then that dilemma regarding acronyms becomes quite important.

 

[Trish]

well this is well-timed?

Just came through via email from the ME Association: Help the British Psychological Society develop good practice guidelines for ME/CFS - The ME Association

I'll start a new thread on this. I'm sure UK members will want to be alerted to it.

 

[Amw66]

There was a lot here that I found worth thinking about. I'm not the target audience - I think therapists would find the paper worth reading, and I'd like them to read it. I wonder if the academic language would be off-putting, as it was to me. Perhaps the author could consider writing a magazine article for a relevant profession - I'd love to see something on this in a BACME publication! I hope the author is invited to speak to conferences of therapists, again, this is the type of stuff that should be heard at a BACME conference and could go some way to counteract the paternalistic therapeutic approaches of the likes of Peter Gladwell.

I wonder what our members who counsel people with ME/CFS think. @Joan Crawford?

Perhaps someone with contacts could share with Sean O Neill , Sarah Boothby and George Monbiot ?

 

[Trish]

I'll start a new thread on this. I'm sure UK members will want to be alerted to it.

Thread here:
UK: British Psychological Society survey on their planned new guidance on ME/CFS

 

[DigitalDrifter]

Help the British Psychological Society develop good practice guidelines for ME/CFS

These guidelines are being produced by the British Psychological Society (BPS) with the help of Action for ME and the ME Association.

Unfortunate acronym.

 

[NelliePledge]

Unfortunate acronym.

I assume the British Psychological Society predates the ‘biopsychosocial model’