Why CBT for ME is such a BIG LIE

By Louette Harding

Aged just 32, Sophia Mirza lost her life to ME – the first time the condition was recorded as an official cause of death in the UK.

Here, her mother talks to Louette Harding about Sophia’s excruciating final years and the torment they suffered at the hands of a health profession that didn’t know how to treat her illness.

As a former midwife and qualified nurse, Criona Wilson says that if there’s one thing she knows about, it’s illness. ‘There’s a rhythm to sickness, to getting better,’ she says. When her youngest daughter mysteriously became unwell, she had a feel for the diagnosis. ‘Although I’d never nursed anyone with the condition before, looking at Sophia I said, “I think you have ME.”’

Eight years later, in 2006, Sophia Mirza’s inquest dramatically supported her mother’s instinct. The coroner ruled that the 32-year-old had died of complications due to myalgic encephalomyelitis, a landmark verdict in the UK.

A neuropathologist told the court that Sophia’s spinal cord was inflamed, with three quarters of her sensory cells displaying significant abnormalities.

Yet, as Sophia’s treatment by the medical establishment had underlined – she was forcibly sectioned for a spell in 2003 – many doctors handle ME (also known as postviral or chronic fatigue syndrome), as if it were a mental condition.