By Kassy Fatooh:
Those of us too unwell to actually participate in CBT or in studies on CBT are automatically eliminated from the sample group.
Those who show improvement probably do so because for once some damn attention is being paid to them, even if it is silly attention that discounts the physical deterioration taking place even as they cognate and behave.
Doctor Speedy and ME in search of medical honesty
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is not a CURE for CFS or M.E. but that does not mean at all that it's not helpful. I detest it as much as the next person when I read about anyone daring to suggest that CBT is a "treatment" that will ultimately lead to a resolution of illness, because it is not. But learning how to cope with the fact that you now have an illness with a highly unpredictable course/progression, and especially how to stop negative thought patterns that can lead to the third leading cuase of death in us (suicide), can only be a good thing.
ReplyDeleteIf someone automatically discredits CBT as having any value whatsoever, that makes us as a patient group look snobbish and uneducated. It's only that CBT be proposed as some sort of "cure" at which we should be appalled.
From the Klimas CBT paper (currently In Press in Journal of Psychosomatics).
ReplyDeleteAbstract:
http://www.jpsychores.com/article/S0022-3999(10)00447-2/abstract
[...]
"Selection
"Potential participants underwent a phone screening and a psychiatric screening assessment to determine eligibility. At baseline (T1), participants completed the informed consent, psychosocial questionnaires, and the symptom checklist on a scale from 0 (never) to 4 (very often). Sample questions include “How often have you felt nervous and “stressed?” “How often have you found yourself thinking about things that you have to accomplish?” and “How often have you felt that things were going your way?”. Positive items were reverse scored so that higher scores on this scale indicate greater levels of perceived stress. Also administered was the Profile of Mood States (POMS [27]) to measure overall mood disturbance. The POMS is a 65-adjective checklist used to assess total mood disturbance (TMD) as well as seven mood states: tension/anxiety, depression/dejection, anger/hostility, vigor/activity, fatigue/inertia, confusion–bewilderment, and friendliness [27]. Each item is rated on a five-point scale from 0=not at all to 4=extremely.
"A TMD score was obtained by adding the negative mood factors of tension–anxiety,depression–dejection, anger–hostility, fatigue–inertia, and confusion–bewilderment, and subtracting the sum of the positive mood factors of vigor–activity and friendliness."