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

When the psychologisers say you're imagining that you have Long Covid because you were traumatised by lockdown, and you explain that you weren't, they do a 180-degree turn and say aha: you loved lockdown and you were traumatised by the idea of returning to normality!

There's always a psychological explanation, as long as you aren't bothered about explanations having to have some basis in fact.

 

From another thread, but:

It's completely ridiculous how the real version of events has almost nothing to do with the fantasy she is depicting of LC. It definitely sounds like it's a more rational set of arguments and ideas, but it's almost as delusional as QAnon and other conspiracy fantasies. Some of the facts she cites are not entirely wrong, but they may as well be, and all of them are at least a bit wrong, some of them ridiculously so.

But those beliefs are so alluring, the idea that the mind is some magical entity with magical powers over substance, is basically the last enduring magical belief that remains in the modern world. Which is so very sad. Magic used to about doing wonderful things, and what remains, having mostly been explained by science, is just awful stuff like imagining that people can make themselves ill by just... who the hell even knows? Definitely more sorcery than magic.

 

So true.
I have an interest in ancient history and ancient civilisations, and made the mistake yesterday of clicking on some information which seemed interesting, unfortunately it fell victim to the “ancient aliens” theories.

Who built pyramids? Aliens. Stonehenge? Aliens. Moai? Aliens. Cave paintings? You guessed it, there are no apparent clues as to how the ancients knew how to do complex stuff, so must be aliens.

If in doubt, and lacking any evidence

medicine = psychological issues
History = aliens did it

possibly it’s aliens causing us all to be unwell?

 

Ah now the BSP plan becomes clear!

 

Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan Quoted on the BBC

https://twitter.com/user/status/1901208019624493295

 

Oh, hey, give them some credit. It isn't as ridiculous as aliens, it's the ghosts of murdered aliens.

 

Oh wow the chickens are coming home to roost here, aren't they?

Having spent decades artificially inflating mental illnesses on the basis of psychosomatic ideology, even turning most mental health resources to this fake problem, giving the false impression of a massive crisis of mental health, largely on the belief that too many people are being unnecessarily diagnosed with medical illnesses, now there are too many mental health diagnoses, which they did on purpose, and it's framed exactly the same way as the model that created the inflated diagnoses in the first place: they're just worried well, or whatever.

The incoherence of this ideology is such that, by comparison, the ghosts of murdered aliens sounds almost the same. The real issue here is a crisis of people being guided by delusional fantasies, usually for personal profit, and the problem appears to be just as bad in the conspiracy fantasy crowds as in the freaking health care industry. It has distinctions, but no meaningful differences.

 

The Age of Diagnosis by Suzanne O'Sullivan
Book of the Week. A thought-provoking new book from the neurologist and award-winning author Suzanne O'Sullivan, exploding conventional wisdom about medical diagnoses.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/m0028zxt?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

 

Certainly explodes conventional wisdom. In a dangerous post-facts, post-expert, post-truth way.

 

Transcription (in the section below) of a podcast(?) where she talks about Huntington’s disease. Line breaks added.

Huntington’s disease (HD) is often described as a combination of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and ALS. It has a diagnosed prevalence of <0.01 %.

I’ve been close to 5 people with HD, and it’s misleading to say that it usually starts with psychiatric and behavioural changes. Every patient will present differently, and the physical symptoms can be just as prevalent, if not more. This especially goes for symptoms that are difficult to mask like involuntary eye movements.

To me, HD serves as a reminder of how society and the people in it view being sick. Only 10-20 % choose to take the genetic test, and the patients are never encouraged one way or another. The lack of testing means that it’s a lot more difficult to provide adequate help because most patients are unable to recognise how sick they are (it’s a part of the neurodegenerative aspect).

But as soon as they have a treatment, everyone will be encouraged to test as early as possible. So the issue isn’t knowing that you’re sick, it’s knowing that you’re sick and can’t do anything about it.

So in my opinion, HD is an example of potential harmfull under-diagnosis. It makes my blood boil that she’s using this cruel disease to further her own agenda about over-diagnosis.

—————

What's happening with Huntington's disease?

[01:01:28]
I just think this is a really powerful story to teach us about how your experience of your body is altered, about beliefs about your health. So Huntington's disease is a degenerative condition. It's very Very unpleasant. It usually Begins in someone's 30s or 40s with psychiatric symptoms and behavioral changes. It's a neurodegenerative condition.

So you get frontal lobe symptoms, like impulse control, and then you start getting involuntary movements. They're called choreophor movements, like funny, writhing movements. And then ultimately you lose control of your speech and over your swallow. So you have both a psychiatric decline and you have a physical decline.

It's an inherited condition. And they discovered the gene for Huntington's in 1994, I think it was. If your parent has a Huntington's disease gene, then you have a 50, 50 chance of getting it.

I think this is a fascinating concept because there are people walking around knowing that they have a 50, 50 chance of getting this disease and knowing that there is a test that they can get that will tell them whether they have it or they don't have it. And of all those people who could have that test, only about 10 or 20% of people actually have the test.

[01:02:39]
Oh, interesting.

[01:02:40]
They have this opportunity to know this enormous part of their health future, and they don't take it up. I spoke to a lady called Valentina. Her mother was adopted, so didn't know this was in the family.
Valentina was 28 and pregnant when she discovered her mom had Huntington's disease. So the minute she discovered that, she knew she had a 50, 50 chance of getting it, and she knew that her unborn child had a 25% chance of getting it, obviously it was dead. She had siblings who had children.

The family were very anxious, and their first impulse was to think they would be tested. They met genetic counselors, and then it was pointed out to them that the minute you test, your whole life changes if it's positive and it's a devastating diagnosis. So they put it off.

Now, what happened to Valentin in the following years is although she hadn't tested, she became absolutely convinced she had Huntington's disease. She could just tell she had it. Organization problems and anxiety and anger outbursts are common at the beginning of Huntington's disease. She began having arguments with her husband or if she went to the airport, she couldn't organize her documents.

[01:03:39]
If she was walking, she'd walk into walls. So she was aware that her symptoms were accruing, but she was frightened to have the test, to have it confirmed, because the minute it was confirmed for her, her children were at a much higher risk. And she just couldn't face the idea of looking at her children and thinking, I'm going to die, and you've got a 50, 50 chance of going the same way.

So she actually waited about 20 years to have the test. And she only had the test when she was so disabled by these symptoms that she realized she just had to have it confirmed. And when she went and had the test, it was negative. She didn't have it.

[01:04:14]
Oh, my God.

[01:04:14]
Oh, my God. Well, in that case, I wish she had had the test, obviously.

[01:04:21]
But you see that work with that strong. You see, because all of her little symptoms didn't all go away. She still got flustered in airports, but it didn't get out of control. And that was what was happening, is she's noticing little things. And because she thought she has Huntington's, then she was examining her body and thinking, what's going to happen? Because she'd seen her mom get sick. She knew exactly what was going to happen next. So she was really focused.

But imagine if 20 years ago she had the test and it was positive. Then every one of those symptoms, none of which were due to Huntington's, would have persisted. That's the difficulty with knowing you're at risk of a disease that might not happen for 20 years. The symptoms will start long before the disease starts. And every ordinary thing that happens to you, that happens to all of us. Every time you lose your keys, every time you trip over a paving stone.

[01:05:12]
Yeah, it's confirmation bias. You're excluding a ton of data and focusing on a very tiny bit of data to validate what you already have. A hunch is true.

[01:05:20]
Exactly. And it shows the power of thinking you have a disease. And that's why it's so important to this discussion about pre diabetes or autism or adhd. If you think you have the disease, some people will display the features of the disease, and that can be really hard to overcome.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV5Hx7XXiQg

 

Some of what she says is interesting, but am I right that she regards ME/CFS as a psychosomatic condition, and what is her evidence for saying that? In my view, it undermines her credibility. It shows her up as someone who has started with a hypothesis and is reaching for evidence to support it: confirmation bias in other words. Of course, the book she is selling fits with the narrative of the day so she’s all over the media at the moment.

 

She definitely does for long COVID, so ME/CFS wouldn’t surprise me.

 

According to MEpedia, this book has a whole chapter on ME/CFS:

 

But, her stuff is already 'conventional wisdom'. This nonsense has been conventional wisdom for decades. All she's doing is saying the quiet part louder, but you will have a hard time finding MDs who don't agree with everything she says. Best case they'll moderate it a bit, but I doubt you'd find 1K MDs who would actually disagree overall. Maybe not even 100.

Honestly, having seen it in action for years now, medical propaganda is as offensive and self-serving as any corporate propaganda. If anything, it's sometimes worse because it's couched in benevolent framing when in fact it's just as nakedly self-serving as what any industry does.

But of course this is entirely part of the propaganda, has been for decades. It's always both new and novel, and always will be.