ME and blaming the patient or the mother as the CBT blokes like to do

Just click on the picture so it will be easier to read .....

The following is not of my doing, but I found this fantastic RAPID RESPONSE in the BMJ to an article by the illustrious professor who has made a living of blaming the patient or parents and ignoring all common sense.

Don't believe ME???

Just read on and you'll be amazed.....

On "Blaming the Mother" 9 April 2000

BY: Dr Lawrence Kelly, Doctor of Jurisprudence, Ann Arbor, Michigan U.S.A.
Response to article in the BMJ called:"Blaming the Mother"

"I note that the continuing discussion of the "Marcovitch matter" has apparently escaped a comment from any of your U.S. readers. If you'll allow me, I'd like to suggest that an interesting point (and an important opportunity for insight) is being missed.

When parents bring a child to a physician, and the physician rewards them with the diagnosis, "I'm happy to say I've found the cause. It is you", it would seem self-evident that a hypothesis which should strongly compete with one such as "Munchausen-by-proxy" is -- quite simply -- simple physician inadequacy, or frank incompetence.

It was a full century of incompetent physicians, of course, who so cavalierly contrived such jargon ("diagnoses") as "the schizophrenogenic mother"; and "the refrigerator mother"; and "the perfectionist mother"; and "the smothering mother"; and "the overprotective mother"; and "the depressogenic mother"; and the "anxiogenic parent" -- in schizophrenia; autism, anorexia nervosa, homosexuality, Tourette syndrome, depression and anxiety, respectively (1).

Currently, the effort in "cot death" (a leader in which effort (2) is the coiner of "Munchausen-by-proxy"(3)) is to put the blame for medically-puzzling loss of an infant back on the devastated mother and father. In "chronic fatigue syndrome", the trick is to put blame on the patient (as Wessely (4) might put it , "I have divined the cause."

And guess what?

It's not some elusive virus. It is, quite simply: 'You' (you and your 'cognitively-skewed' outlook on life)".

What do we see in common here -- other than a reflex to blame the ill, or the ill one's parents?

Mystery. Medical inadequacy. Frustration. Hubris. In that order.

What else -- in each instance -- do we see?

Very puzzling ("frustrating") illnesses, each once facilely branded "psychogenic", and each conveniently "caused" by either the patient or parent -- but all now increasingly, and very embarrassingly, being recognized as in fact subtly organic (5).

But how do you apologize to a century of disastrously malserved parents, and patients?

And after you brand a "too-caring" mother as a "Munchausen" (or a "cot death" survivor as a "baby-killer"), how do you put the shattered family back together?

And how do you get the mother out of jail -- or, if you do get her out, how do you give back to her and her family their lost years?

The utter disaster entailed in a "Muchausen-by-proxy" diagnosis is such that one would think that the existence of such a "disease", and the leveling of its diagnosis, would be matters approached with the most exquisite care.

But, just the opposite.

The very existence of the "disease" is "suspect" (3). And the so-called "diagnoses" are shoddiness incarnate (3).

Simple instinct or intuition should of course tell us that.

But, for those who demand painstaking scholarship, Allison and Roberts spend a full 290 pages detailing the hubric conceit upon which this parent-attacking "disease" is built, and with which it is so easily, and capriciously, applied (3).

The U.S. and the U.K. are equals in these regards. Unchallenged incompetence (and its integral companion, hubris) in either land tends to shore it up in the other.

Take "mass hysteria" as example. I presume it is now quite clear to most in the U.K. that the Royal Free Hospital doctors and nurses who fell to some virus in the mid-50s were not, as argued (6), simply a bunch of "mass hysterics".

But, as British author Wessely (7), American authors, and especially our supposed "microbe hunters", the "CDC" (Centers for Disease Control), remain deeply in love with these kinds of poorly-aging psychogenic "explanations" of puzzling presentations (8)(9).

When mystery presents, and you can find nothing but feel you have to blame something, who better than the patients who saddled you with the mystery or, if they are too young to blame, how about their "much-too-concerned" parents?

(As Meadow extrapolated the "Munchausen" theory (itself suspect (3)) on to his "Munchausen-by-proxy" blame of "overly-concerned" parents (3), so Wessely has taken the "mass hysteria" theory (also suspect (10)) on to his "mass sociogenic illness by proxy" blame of "overly-concerned" parents (7).

For a nice example of transatlantic psychogenic cross-talk, compare Wessely (7) and the CDC (9)).

(Conflict of interest: A healthy skepticism. Aside from that, none.)

(1) This point's multiple references are available, by return email, via request to author.

(2) Meadow R. Unnatural sudden infant death. Arch Dis Child. 1999 Jan;80(1):7-14.

(3) Allison DB, Roberts MS (1998). Disordered Mother or Disordered Diagnosis? Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome. Hillsdale NJ and London: The Analytic Press.

(4) Sharpe M, Wessely S. Cognitive behaviour therapy. Review was unsystematic. BMJ. 1997 Nov 22;315(7119):1376

(5) The numerous references are available, by return email, via request to author.

(6) McEvedy CP, Beard AW. Royal Free Epidemic 1955, a reconsideration. BMJ. 1970. 1:7.

(7) Wessely S, Wardle CJ. Mass sociogenic illness by proxy: parentally reported epidemic in an elementary school. Br J Psychiatry. 1990 Sep;157:421-4.

(8) Small GW, et al. Mass hysteria among schoolchildren. Early loss as a predisposing factor. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1982 Jun;39(6):721-4.

(9) Philen RM, et al. Mass sociogenic illness by proxy: parentally reported epidemic in an elementary school. Lancet. 1989 Dec 9;2(8676):1372-6.

(10) Aldous JC, et al. An outbreak of illness among schoolchildren in London: toxic poisoning not mass hysteria. J Epidemiol Community Health. 1994 Feb;48(1):41-5."

>>>>> CLICK here for the original rapid response by Dr LAWRENCE KELLY …..

Amazing wouldn't you say that SEVEN years later we, or I should say the GOBSART Academy of Ignoring Clinical Evidence and their BLOOD BROTHERS at the CBT MAGIC KINGDOM haven't learned a thing.