M C S A NEWS: The only apparent benefit of continued research into psychiatric causes for ME/CFS lies in the pocketbooks of CBT psychiatrists

M C S A NEWS:

Myalgic Encephamyelitis / Chronic Fatigue
Syndrome (ME/CFS) researchers
have reportedly received death threats
from people with ME/CFS for their continued
research into possible psychological
causes of ME/CFS.
The psychological research has continued
for years despite the lack of evidenced
for a psychological explanation
and ineffectiveness of psychological interventions.
''People do however have a justifiable
complaint about is that there has been
very little, or almost nil, Governmentfunded
research into the biomedical aspect
of this illness,” says Dr. Charles
Shepherd,

>---< ME/CFS patients believe that this downplays their symptoms and disease. Further, it prevents research into the actual cause and potentially helpful treatments for a devastating disease triggered by infections that are not yet fully understood. One researcher, Simon Wessely, has steadfastly insisted ME/CFS is a form of neurosis, despite the fact that psychological treatment continues to show no improvement in patient outcome. In fact, many people with ME/ CFS experience deteriorating health after psychiatric interventions. In the United Kingdom, victims of ME/ CFS who have been forcefully hospitalized in a psychiatric institution frequently experience worsening of their condition. There have also been cases in which the victim died due to denial of medical care because their ME/CFS was mistakenly believed to be psychiatric. Wessely’s comments seem intended to make the patient with ME/CFS sound as though they ‘want’ to be sick to lend truth to unproven theories of neurosis. They fail to explore the fact that people with any illness want to know the truth about their condition, irregardless, so they know what they are facing and can make the best possible health care decisions. >---< “The real psychopathology is in denial of the truth, the ultimate psychotic state of pretending that a real medical condition can simply be ‘thought’ all better by changing ones frame of mind,” says Lourdes Salvador of MCS America. >---< Researchers like Wessely fail to take into account that ...

Researchers like Wessely fail to take into account that people with ME/CFS
would be better off knowing what was causing their illness so that researchers
could focus their attention on helpful treatments and advances in medicine.
People afflicted by this disease want nothing more than to get their life back.
To do that, research needs to focus on what is really going on at a biological
level. The only apparent benefit of continued research into psychiatric
causes for ME/CFS lies in the pocketbooks of psychiatrists
who get paid to administer ‘care’ to these patients for a lifetime of
misery with no improvements.

Any further research into wildly unproven psychological theories is
on thin ice. If only it was that simple, it would be easily cured! But,
all the happy pills and talk therapy in the world won’t kill a poorly
understood and inadequately researched virus.

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