101 Reasons Why it is wrong to provide CBT and GET to ME Patients

Greg Crowhurst (With special thanks to Clara Valverde):
Permission to Repost

From the literature ,

here are 101 good reasons why services are wrong to provide Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) and Graded Exercise Therapy (GET) for ME patients :


1. Malcolm Hooper

CBT is based on the idea that somatoform disorders are maintained by abnormal or unhelpful illness beliefs which lead to abnormal or unhelpful behaviour.

The first requirement for a somatoform diagnosis is that there be no physical cause for the symptoms. This is not the case in ME/CFS” http://www.investinme.org/Article-361%20Statements%20of%20Concern%20-%20CBT-GET%20JR%20Feb09.htm


2. Dr William Weir

“Two forms of treatment…are CBT and GET CBT is a psychological treatment. Its application in what is certainly an organic disorder is basically irrational.... Its application is counter-intuitive, particularly when one of the most debilitating and well recognised symptoms of ME/CFS is post-exertional malaise which can put some patients in bed for days after relatively trivial exertion” http://www.investinme.org/Article-361%20Statements%20of%20Concern%20-%20CBT-GET%20JR%20Feb09.htm


3. Dr Irving Spurr

I consider that the recommendation of CBT and GET as blanket treatments of ‘clinically excellent’ first choice is extremely dangerous to patients. http://www.investinme.org/Article-361%20Statements%20of%20Concern%20-%20CBT-GET%20JR%20Feb09.htm


4. Dr Eleanor Stein

A close read of the literature reveals that none of the core symptoms of ME/CFS improve with CBT or GET. http://www.investinme.org/Article-361%20Statements%20of%20Concern%20-%20CBT-GET%20JR%20Feb09.htm


5. Dr Byron Hyde

“(Graded exercise therapy) is not therapy – it is simply the enforcement of an opinion rather than a treatment based upon any scientific examination of a patient’s pathology and treatment of that pathology. …..Graded exercise programmes may be significantly dangerous to many of these ME patients” http://www.investinme.org/Article-361%20Statements%20of%20Concern%20-%20CBT-GET%20JR%20Feb09.htm Read more>>

See also: Jan 2011, Spanish study shows that CBT and GET make things WORSE in ME/CFS !!!