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

Utsikt said:
It should be mentioned that the rubber arm experiment doesn’t create pain. It only activates a reflex based on tricking the predictive mechanisms that are used for determining the position of our body (we need predictions based on sight because the nerves are too slow to do highly co-ordinated tasks like intercepting something or hitting something.)

So the experiment actually shows that pain isn’t predictive, which is the complete opposite of what @Friendswithme claims

Edit: Snow Leopard already made the point in this comment: https://s4me.info/threads/united-kingdom-dr-suzanne-o’sullivan-bps-neurologist.6289/post-602518
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Yes, our proprioception of limbs can be fooled because it is a predictive system, but our pain systems cannot because they are not predictive (and it makes no sense that they would be predictive).
 
As ever, Dr O’Sullivan’s writing is lucid and thoughtful, marked by a compassion that avoids sentimentality. She is never polemical; instead, she guides the reader through delicate ethical terrain with a steady hand and open mind. She avoids simplistic binaries and instead invites a more integrative and humane view of illness and diagnosis. In doing so, The Age of Diagnosis aligns with a growing body of literature that seeks to rehumanise medicine in an era of increasing technological sophistication.
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None of those assertions makes any sense to me. Maybe others have better luck with understanding it?
 
Telegraph (needs sub)
Celebrities are glamorising ADHD and autism by making a diagnosis seem desirable, a leading neurologist has claimed.

Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan said the uplifting accounts of famous people were misleading the public and setting them up for failure. Autism can be a severe disability but it is now being over-diagnosed, she added.
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In recent years, a number of celebrities have spoken of being diagnosed with ADHD and autism as adults, some in middle age.

“We’re misleading people as a society,” Dr O’Sullivan said during a talk at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. “We’ve got an awful lot of celebrities saying, ‘Well, I got my diagnosis and the world opened up to me.’ And they get book deals and stand-up comedy tours.

“The average person who gets diagnosed will not get those things, but we have a culture of leading people to believe that a diagnosis will lead somewhere wonderful.

“It’s now being incorporated into people’s personalities as an identity. I work with people with epilepsy. We’ve never called them ‘epileptics’ – we call them ‘people with epilepsy’ because they are people who happen to have that disease.

“Whereas now the trend is to say ‘I am autistic’, rather than ‘I’m a person with autism’. And that is a real problem because, once you incorporate your illness into your identity, how do you get better?”
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Dr O’Sullivan, a consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, works with patients whose autism causes severe learning disabilities. She is the author of The Age of Diagnosis, which argues that we are overdiagnosing mild cases of autism, as well as of ADHD and long Covid.
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eta: "....is now being over-diagnosed"......
So who is doing the diagnosing, and why?
 
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This woman is incredibly dangerous.

I don't think its a coincidence that her and Wessely are being elevated as the naysayers of 'overdiagnosis' now.

It's quite frightening as an autistic person that we seem to be in the crosshairs both from the far right (RFK, Farage) and centre (Wessely, S O'S, the DWP).

She doesn't even understand what postive things you get from diagnosis. The world doesn't 'open up to you', you understand yourself better and can adjust your life accordingly to better accommodate your strengths and struggles.

Or that you do say a dyslexic person, a dyspraxic person etc. (Person with autism is generally disliked among autistic people, we preffer the latter) Or that you can't 'get better' from autism! This I think lays bear the central fear of the psychobehavioural project. You have a bunch of psychiatrists and psychologists so terrified of chronic incurable health issues that they are manifesting a reality where they can cure or at least improve them.

Anyway perhaps the world might have opened up to me after being diagnosed with autism but unfortunately a year before that I had come down with an illness that for some reason doctors seemed rather afraid to diagnose...
 
Sly Saint said:
According to KCL, they are 'under-diagnosing'.....

www.dailymail.co.uk

Could you be one of the 'millions' of undiagnosed autistic adults?

A top UK-based psychologist has shared seven tell-tale signs of autism in adults.
www.dailymail.co.uk www.dailymail.co.uk
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This is the thing! I have friends who are almost certainly autistic and struggling because of it who literally cannot get an assessment because there is basically no NHS provision.

And being diagnosed later in life for me (late 20s) meant that by the time I was diagnosed I had already developed serious mental health and addiction issues from struggling to be 'normal' and trying to cope with my sensory symptoms and mood swings etc.

The idea that because autism might be two conditions (although it might not, look at how differently mild and very severe ME present), the people with the less debilitating presentation are fine and should be thrown to the wolves is callous and illogical.

Although I suppose we should thank our lucky stars O'Sullivan isn't telling everyone that people with level 3 autism are just neurotic...
 
“The average person who gets diagnosed will not get those things, but we have a culture of leading people to believe that a diagnosis will lead somewhere wonderful.
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How is anyone taking this nonsense seriously? Where do they even come up with this stuff? She seems to be following the typical influencer path of saying more outrageous things because this is how you get as much coverage as she does. She got a lot of headlines this year and it's all because she is talking nonsense that gets drunks at a punch howling with laughter because punches down.

There's always money and power in punching down.
 
“It’s now being incorporated into people’s personalities as an identity. I work with people with epilepsy. We’ve never called them ‘epileptics’ – we call them ‘people with epilepsy’ because they are people who happen to have that disease.

“Whereas now the trend is to say ‘I am autistic’, rather than ‘I’m a person with autism’. And that is a real problem because, once you incorporate your illness into your identity, how do you get better?”
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Are people who say "I am blind" or "I am deaf" pathologically identified with that part of themselves? No. This literal interpretation is so irritating. So much of this is at least partially due to linguistic accident: autism lends itself well to being made into an adjective, whereas ME/CFS doesn't.

Even more so because health professionals had to be coached into the "people with..." wording because they DID refer to "the epileptic/Down's in bed 4" and seemed to have forgotten the humanity of their patients at times.

Health professionals' job is to diagnose and treat, not dictate how and when people communicate their diagnosis or difference to others.
 
Sly Saint said:
Telegraph (needs sub)




eta: "....is now being over-diagnosed"......
So who is doing the diagnosing, and why?
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And she is peddling this nonsense as a Dr of Neurology at “The Cheltenham Literature Festival”, promoting her populist book? I am imploded from the irony.
She should stop making sub-sixth form hot take books and courting the press her whole personality, and go and do some medical treatment on sick people.
 
SNT Gatchaman said:
Re: the rubber hand illusion.





Yes, apparently also octopuses (octopodes for the pedants).

Rubber arm illusion in octopus (2025, Current Biology)

Commentary in Science: Octopuses fall for the ‘rubber arm’ illusion, just like us
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the rubber hand illusion being about 'belief' ? really??

even scientific psychology wouldn't / shouldn't teach that(if it is a proper course that is about methodology and therefore looking at each school so that you can learn about research standards and what is/can be known and what can't too, but also know enough about how the brain works that you know what must be controlled/limitations in order to not be misappropriating causality).

it's basic proprioception - hence why you have to actually use the mirror in order that the visual system 'sees' the hand/arm being there and potentially being stroked if that is being done too.

Noone is being conned and sadly the term belief seems to be used/misused by certain schools these days as a horrible way of getting around the main aim of those who use it which is skirting informed consent and/or justifying over-riding autonomy.

In fact I think it is quite the opposite to what most people think belief is and is more closely aligned to someone training themselves to pat their head and rub their tummy which takes concentration and focus, or the concept of 'balance' eg if you were trying to improve skiing or learn a gymnastic move - the point being that it doesn't matter if eg 'phantom limb' is no longer there it is influencing the pathway 'feeding' it and having that visual there helps to access that just like doing a memory task with or without 'stimulus' like a clue or prompt would (which means it isn't 'subconscious' or unconscious' more automatic in the sense of learning to drive so well when you are asked to remember out loud which actions you'd take becomes effortful).
 
Friendswithme said:
Many thousands of scientists disagree with you on this, though.

Pain is a warning system but a bit of a primitive one. It's job is to warn you are are in danger, so in this case you move your hand. It's more important to move the hand and avoid harm than it is to figure out that it's a fake hand being hurt. In the moment, the brain fully believes it is your hand being hurt and that action is needed.

Fatigue is also used by the brain to protect you. It can be used to remove you from an environment to keep you safe in all sorts of circumstances. We understand this pretty comprehensively these days but one example is thanks to studying runners in marathons. 'The brain uses the symptoms of fatigue as key regulators to insure that the exercise is completed before harm develops.' The brain predicts when harm might arise (for example you are running out of fuel) and makes you tired to get you to stop. See here: 10.3389/fphys.2012.00082 (Noakes TD. Fatigue is a Brain-Derived Emotion that Regulates the Exercise Behavior to Ensure the Protection of Whole Body Homeostasis. Front Physiol. 2012 or Lekander's book). The fatigue kicks in before your fuel actually runs out or another harm occurs. It is protective.

Ergo, beliefs can cause the symptom of fatigue in M.E if part of your brain feels under threat. It is a belief that is unknown to you, but it still exists within your brain which is trying to juggle all sorts of sensory input.
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I'm frankly struggling to be polite or sensitive on these citations. All they do is reveal that the fatigue literature has a major problem of letting BSers in. Who don't even try and pretend they understand what evidence us just make up what do laypersons might seem like theories but have little sense in them unless they come from a background of not having been taught to actually think on these subjects but instead just be OK it has a name and date after the manifesto.

What nonsense on marathon runners - hilarious because they get to how many miles when any of this might happen at what pace? and it is being written by people who probably have never properly trained or run anywhere near such things in their lives to realise that the issue is people getting their pacing wrong on the marathon. And it being known as 'the wall' for all the decades before their writing by quite sensible people who do know, because 'people go through it' and it's nothing to do with fatigue.

I mean I thought things were bad in this world of letting in people who make up crap but I didn't realise it was this bad. I'm very angry that the subject of psychology had a time where it had a chance of being properly regulated and then being able to regulate the problem areas of psychoanalaysis (that is made up crap, but they were going to give it a 'good faith' chance of seeing if they could do the work for them of if there was any of it that had any worth or anything 'in it' by trying to oversee and assess outcomes) and psychosomatic and the like, but it bent to being taken over clearly by those who don't want rigour. For obvious reasons.

This is all just fallacial non-logic being exampled 'if this were true then therefore/ergo..' come on.

Are some people really happy to take the subject to its worst days where all it is is people repeating nonsense fairy tales of 'supposed feels under threat' and not defining 'sensory input' and how it works or how it combines and comes together in a situation-specific sense? Have too many with neither a scientific background nor wanting to have/learn one as an approach to being rigorous been let in?

This is so full of non-sequiturs misleading people - talking inaccurately about pain and the old dropping a hot pan in order to them try and claim fatigue is the same ... in all circumstances of 'fatigue'? really?

that's like talking about tremor and saying because 'sometimes dogs quiver at the vets' and trying to then assert something about all versions including people will illnesses that cause tremor. It doesn't help the subject look sensible.
 
bobbler said:
I'm frankly struggling to be polite or sensitive on these citations. All they do is reveal that the fatigue literature has a major problem of letting BSers in. Who don't even try and pretend they understand what evidence us just make up what do laypersons might seem like theories but have little sense in them unless they come from a background of not having been taught to actually think on these subjects but instead just be OK it has a name and date after the manifesto.

What nonsense on marathon runners - hilarious because they get to how many miles when any of this might happen at what pace? and it is being written by people who probably have never properly trained or run anywhere near such things in their lives to realise that the issue is people getting their pacing wrong on the marathon. And it being known as 'the wall' for all the decades before their writing by quite sensible people who do know, because 'people go through it' and it's nothing to do with fatigue.

I mean I thought things were bad in this world of letting in people who make up crap but I didn't realise it was this bad. I'm very angry that the subject of psychology had a time where it had a chance of being properly regulated and then being able to regulate the problem areas of psychoanalaysis (that is made up crap, but they were going to give it a 'good faith' chance of seeing if they could do the work for them of if there was any of it that had any worth or anything 'in it' by trying to oversee and assess outcomes) and psychosomatic and the like, but it bent to being taken over clearly by those who don't want rigour. For obvious reasons.

This is all just fallacial non-logic being exampled 'if this were true then therefore/ergo..' come on.

Are some people really happy to take the subject to its worst days where all it is is people repeating nonsense fairy tales of 'supposed feels under threat' and not defining 'sensory input' and how it works or how it combines and comes together in a situation-specific sense? Have too many with neither a scientific background nor wanting to have/learn one as an approach to being rigorous been let in?

This is so full of non-sequiturs misleading people - talking inaccurately about pain and the old dropping a hot pan in order to them try and claim fatigue is the same ... in all circumstances of 'fatigue'? really?

that's like talking about tremor and saying because 'sometimes dogs quiver at the vets' and trying to then assert something about all versions including people will illnesses that cause tremor. It doesn't help the subject look sensible.
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I feel like we’re the last “lost tribe” being studied by imperialist victorians ascribing our reasonable human behaviours and traditions to their own prejudices. They’re endlessly fascinated by our primitive, fecund, unsophisticated society and how we think glass beads are amazing.

Who will survive in the jungle, though? Not them.
 
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