What the Heck are They Talking About: Neurological CFS: History of Psychiatry and medically unexplained symtoms

"How many times can a man turn his head
and pretend that he just doesn't see?"

Bob Dylan, "Blowin' in the Wind" *

How often does medical knowledge outrun the course of disease? Hmmm, let me re-word that. How many people have died or been chronically ill waiting on a microscope to "see" germs, for diagnostic blood tests, for the invention of MRIs and CAT scans? How many illnesses have been blamed on the patient for lack of medical knowledge?

As Dr. Malcom Hooper, Emeritus Professor of Medicinal Chemistry notes, misunderstood diseases have a long history in medicine, and ME/CFS and fibromyalgia are not the first conditions for which medical science did not have an explanation and were first claimed to be psychiatric. Multiple Sclerosis (MS) used to be called hysterical paralysis; in the 1940s Parkinsons Disease was said by prominent psychiatrists of the time to be due to the desire in the moralistic man to masturbate (the intention tremor supposedly due to a conflict between “ an aggressive drive towards action and an equally strong internal pressure to inhibit action: this conflict results in tremor;" asthma was said to be 100% psychological and before the discovery of Helicobacter in 1973, gastric ulcers used to be ascribed to an anxious personality.

The speed with which the psychiatric establishment catches on is like watching turtles race. Some doctors are adamant that if the words fibromylagia and chronic fatigue syndrome were to remain unspoken by both doctors and the "media" these biological illnesses would literally "poof" cease to exist. I suspect they also think that if they shout loud enough and often enough no one will notice the steadily increasing biological markers and evidence. They certainly hope you will.

Others grudgingly give ground and acknowledging that there could have been a viral trigger but, go on to enumerate that symptom severity and failure to recover are based on psychogenic problems with patients; "badly behaved" patients at that.

And is perhaps human nature, the only people who do not believe ME/CFS and fibromyalgia are severe biological illnesses are people who have never experienced anything like it.

I believe that is called self-absorbtion.

* Fibromyalgia: The Answer is 'Blowin' in the Wind
KEVIN P. WHITE, MD, PhD,
Rheumatologist and Epidemiologist,
London, Ontario, Canada.

What the Heck are They Talking About: Neurological CFS

History of Psychiatry and medically unexplained symtoms

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