United Kingdom: Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan (BPS neurologist)

These people have their heads up each others' backsides. (Echo chamber?! ). Only see what they want to see, without caring to see truth.

 

I think she means us paying attention to our symptoms. They believe that causes us to blow them out of proportion and become disabled.

 

Ah i see what you mean @Sid yes perhaps you're right. just so used to hearing them say we're attention seeking i read that into it. But what i said about the fear/avoidance still stands.

I do resent the 'take to their beds' trope in any case - people rarely go to bed if they arent forced to.

 

I think we all know how the real attention / fear / avoidance cycle works in ME:

Look at me! I’m the doctor with all the answers!
Oh no… my patient doesn’t seem to be getting better. What if I’m wrong after all?
I’ll just ignore all the science being done, blame the patients for being unwell, and say I alone have the answers!
(Repeat.)

Fortunately there is a cure: GET (Graded Epistemology Therapy) and CBT (Challenging Bogus Therapy). Sadly even when those who benefit the most from these treatments are willing to seek help, they may still suffer outbursts of conviction that they alone can cure a serious illness through faith healing. But with time, they can learn not to be professionally or ethically debilitated by these experiences.

 

Yep it’s plain bigotry- anyone saying it needs some self-analysis as if they don’t mean to be a bigot they need to ask why they are being one

 

Omg I think she actually believes that she is ‘the enlightened one’ but then (probably because as she says she didn’t know what medicine was, so I assume science too, then ‘learned by tote’ before hitting some ‘moment she thinks when she met patients) she seems to confuse empathy (an important skillset which is about insight, and arguably necessary/a driver of good scientific discovery, which some just seem unable to attain, not the 'pretending to be nice' those who can't do it like to pretend it is) and proper scientific psychology (which would analyse the nonsense methods of psychosomatic and call them out where it is due) with misogyny/disability bigotry and rhetoric to pretend it isn't just propaganda. By pretend psychologising sticking nasty little made up or misinterpreted or twisted (versions of what I assume she has been privileged to have someone tell or show her about their life) stories on people. Which is a breach of trust, not 'help'.

Is doing that latter bit - looking how you can use them - worse than saying ‘not this objective thing’ (as she asserts as straw man false justification)? Yes, when you do things that lead to epistemic injustice, removing the voice and existence of a person by talking instead of them and when your work focus on stuff that limits access to the most productive and likely forms of research and help

 

At 5:43: "The neurological system is unbelievably amenable to measurement. So you can't objectively measure pain but you can however objectively measure consciousness. [...] Even when she was convulsing and profoundly unconscious, her brainwaves showed a normal waking pattern that we would expect to see in someone who is awake and well. There's only one way that you can be both unconscious and have a waking brainwave pattern and that is if the unconsciousness is psychologically driven rather than being due to a brain disease."

A statement falsified by the existence of complete locked-in syndrome (CLIS) and its EEG findings. See Varieties of the locked-in syndrome (1979, Journal of Neurology)

During the discussion of conversion disorder, I do agree with her statement at 7:10: "There's an awful lot that's hidden between wooly, changeable terms."

 

The poor lady seems very confused. How could unconsciousness be psychologically driven if the mind is turned off (unconscious). She doesn't mean unconscious. I suspect she doesn't really know what she means. (Sorry to be so controversial.)