United Kingdom: ME Research Collaborative (MERC) [was CMRC] news

Personally i think the main problem with psychiatry, and some of psychology/psychologists too, is afaiaa, unlike a degree in say Humanistic Psychotherapy, there is no requirement that you have had any kind of psychotherapy yourself, (and by psychotherapy here i mean relationship based, self awareness increasing, personal growth enabling, psychotherapy, not counselling or CBT with some minimally trained person, or a visit with a psychologist who merely tells you how to apply certain techniques to change your self-talk).
So you just get a cross section of the population, including psychopaths & sociopaths, & more frequently people who are just grotesquely lacking in self awareness, emotionally illiterate, arrogant, manipulative, smug, superior gits, who get to pronounce on & experiment with the emotional health of others. They can be narcissistic megalomaniacs, but (as far as their qualifications go & the medical profession think).... so what?

All they do is go to medical school & then 'specialise' in psych, ie learn about mental health labels & drugs. You can be a master manipulator who gets off on power, & all your fantasies will come true!! because you will be unleashed with freedom on vulnerable people who cannot challenge you or complain. -Because if they do you will simply discredit their voice by saying 'dont listen to them they're mentally ill". And because you're a Dr, you'll be believed & not your patient.
IMO they are some of the most powerful people on the planet.

Whereas a person doing a degree in any of the humanistic psychotherapy orientations, is mandated to have a lot of personal therapy themselves, (160hrs worth in many cases) so at least there is an opportunity for them to get manipulative crap (or whatever) challenged, and as i understand it, their therapist has to sign off on them being healthy/safe enough to practice.

Now that's not problem-proof obviously, because the therapist giving the therapy to the student could be bonkers, but then they should have had their own therapy etc etc. So it's not perfect by any means, but it's a darn sight better than some clinical psychologist, CBT therapist, or psychiatrist, who's fully trained on how to deliver certain 'treatments' to others, but has never had their own possible maladaptive behaviours challenged - eg 'why do you feel like you need to be in power/control over people?'

And i note that afaics (& I've been looking all the way along over the yrs) not a single humanistically oriented psychotherapist has EVER been involved in ANY of the crappy trials or in abuse of pwme. It goes against their very premise - that they are not 'above' their client ('patient') & that the clients POV is just as important, credible & valid as their own. ETA I was wrong about this - see my nxt post. So i do think it's important to differentiate between psychiatry, psychology & psychotherapy (and CBT is a technique that can be delivered by any of them).

N.B. not suggesting everyone who goes into psychology/iatry/otherapy is manipulative/controlling/power hungry, just using it as an example.

Edited to add - sorry forgot to say that i'm aware that some clinical psychologists do also have their own therapy but many dont.

ETA FAO moderators... sorry for thread drift. I trust you will delete/move/leave as they see fit

 

But surely this is the whole problem. We have no reason to think any of this psychotherapy theory has any truth to it. If you trace it back you get to Saint Sigmund, and he certainly does not seem to have cleared out his broom cupboard very effectively. A good psychiatrist is trained on Feynman's first principle that you try to learn not to fool yourself. What more can anyone do?

 

Human knowledge and understanding (almost put them in quotes) is invariably based on perceptions, and validations of those by perceptions by peers. If you have a very insular group self-validating each other rather than a wider peer group, I think you end up with something much akin to the BSP world.

 

we appear to be having a similar discussion on 2 diff threads which confuses me, so i'll try & make this my last comment here as it not really on topic anyway....

Yes, i see what you're saying. But I don't think it's necessarily the case that all psychological ideas can be traced back to Freud. I mean he started it as a discipline but that doesn't necessarily mean that everything that came after has it's roots in Freudian thinking. Some psychotheraputic thinking is quite opposed to Freudian ideas & developed as a reaction to it.

I would agree that currently i'm unaware of any scientific evidence to show that any of it is accurate. But I don't discount the testimonies of people who report recovery from major mental health issues like PTSD etc through therapy and their lives are transformed. If we are to listen when people say 'exercise makes me ill despite the fact that i cant objectively prove it', we also need to listen when they say 'that helped me, my symptoms are gone'. What we need to do next is test it out with objective outcome measures and some kind of placebo substitute. Until then, as you say, we have no way to be certain if any of it is based on scientifically verifiable fact or whether people who're helped are helped by a glorified placebo effect.

Oh no. I'm wrong..... Helen Payne... humanistic.... she does seem to be on a total empire build. And is key in the MUS crap service development. Ugh. Well that discredits what i said earlier nicely! Well that was embarrassing I think i'll just crawl off under a stone now

Will point this error out in my original post

 

Full disclosure: seems the right time to say that Chris Ponting and I have known each other for many years (since 1983, he reminded me) and it is fair to say that I am the reason he first took an interest in ME/CFS. As a successful scientist running a multi-million pound research programme, he certainly didn’t need to become involved in ME/CFS research in order to enhance his career, and I’m very grateful that he was willing to take on the extra work. I am proud to know Chris: he has been very supportive of me, not least during the darkest hours of my illness. As @Nasim Marie Jafry put it, "I'd say he gets our predicament". He is just the kind of scientist we need working on our illness.

 

I've just posted my perspective on these developments: CMRC's new biomedical focus and big ambitions (my new blog)

 

Thanks for telling us, Simon.

This is very good news, IMO. It's clear in the US that a lot of the biomed researchers who have dedicated themselves to our cause for years (decades, in many cases) have someone that they care about who has ME. They have the purest motives and the most determination, it seems to me, and I'm always reassured when I see that.

I wonder how many others among the scientists in the CMRC who are relatively new to the field are in the same position. It wouldn't surprise me if there were quite a few.

I hope Chris realises how grateful we are for his involvement. He really comes across as a great guy and I think we're really lucky to have him involved.

I hope @Andy can bag him for a forum discussion or interview some day soon.

 

That’s good to know @Simon M I look forward to seeing what unfolds, @Chris Ponting looks to be much better suited to the role.

 

Yes that is my worry. There is some pretty dodgy research that twists biology into a psychosocial pretzel.

 

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/ccah/news/2018/leadership-change.html

Can I leave it with you guys to pass on the news to others (like David Tuller)?

Many thanks

 

He's ahead of you on that one Russ - http://www.virology.ws/2018/03/14/t...ituation-and-professor-crawleys-new-position/

 

Even from Australia! I'm impressed. Dr Shepherd's still wading through his stack of work and only just got to the announcement

 

No rejection of 'functional neurological disorder' yet, though. It's like saying you're running a marathon but then not being willing to cross the finish line for some bizarre reason.

What's keeping them from making that last little step forward to allay patient fears? Is it because they don't really want to cross that line, or is it because they're scared to rock the boat?

Neither is entirely reassuring. It would be such a tiny thing for them to say, yet it would make a huge difference for patients at this point.

 

Will this mean Fester Crawley stops doing research?

 

You mean like Simon Wessely and Peter White did?

 

I wouldn't have thought so. The person she is replacing was involved in research by the looks of it (http://www.bristol.ac.uk/social-community-medicine/people/alan-m-emond/research.html), possibly though it might restrict the number of projects that she has due to extra responsibilities.

She hasn't been moved anywhere, she was already in the Centre for Child and Adolescent Health (http://www.bristol.ac.uk/ccah/research/childdevelopmentdisability/chronic-fatigue/), it's a promotion to lead it.

 

I would think that now she has unfettered access to as many potential adolescent/paediatric participants with whichever proxy versions of CFS she wants, her 'research' is more likely to increase.

 

FUCK! That's all I want to say.