CMO Report: Summarized Results

"Surely it is time that psychiatrists took some notice..."

[ Article: ME-002 ]

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Namaste

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Introduction

Thank you for coming

Hi

The findings in the excellent Doris M Jones MSc article reproduced below would have come as no surprise whatsoever to ME/CFS sufferers. We have, after all, been saying as much for a long time. When all the votes were finally in and carefully counted - pacing, bed-rest, and dietary changes won the day by a landslide. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy [CBT] and Graded Exercise Therapy [GET], on the other hand, were at last shown in their dangerous true colours, by participating patients, and should finally be consigned to the viability-morgue where they have always belonged - there to await a quick, thourough, and hopefully extra deep burial.

As far as I can tell that funeral has still not taken place to date [Sept 2003]. The dangerous notions that CBT and GET are valuable therapies for ME/CFS sufferers are still flapping about in the outdated medical minds of many like headless chickens. To all you GP's and Consultants out there that are involved in some way or another with this modern plague called ME/CFS let me ask you this: How much longer will these dangerous therapies go on being 'officially' advocated? How many more sufferers are to be damaged, perhaps irreparably, by trustingly embracing the strong urgings of your mistaken medical opinions?

Wake up allopathic medical practitioners!
You are playing guessing games with what little is left of our health.
Many trust and depend on you.
Remember: "First do no harm".
Namaste

Namaste
Yours Sincerely
Gordon D McHendry

September 2003

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Article ME-002

CMO Report: Summarized Results

By Doris M Jones MSc.

Date sent: Thu, 10 APR 2003
CMO's Working Group = Chief Medical Officer Working Group (UK) CBT = Cognitive Behavioural Therapy GET = Graded Exercise Therapy

"SOME FACTS AND FIGURES ON CBT, GET AND OTHER APPROACHES"

Directly from the 'Horses' Mouths' Doris M Jones MSc (Reference Group Member, CMO's Working Group)

       In July 1998 the then Chief Medical Officer, Sir Kenneth Calman, announced the setting up of a Working Group on CFS/ME, to include patients, carers, patient group representatives as well as medical experts, including Psychiatrists. The aim was to find out what really worked in treating these conditions and based on findings, to then compile Guidelines on Diagnosis and Treatment for Clinicians and other Health Care Professionals.

       Over 80 people took part in this 3 year exercise, including myself. Patient Support Groups as well as individuals took great pains to get feed-back directly from patients on what kind of treatments worked and which did not. Eventually details were available on 3074 patients, and the summarized results showed very clearly that:

        1.   The most helpful strategies were:
        -----------------------------------------

        b) Bed rest (2165/2426 cases = 89%)

        c) Dietary changes (1496/2226 cases = 67%)

        2.   The least effective strategy was:
        ----------------------------------------

        (made no difference) ( 232/ 423 cases = 55%)

        (made things worse) ( 91/ 423 cases = 22%)

        3.   The most harmful strategy was:
        ----------------------------------------

        (made no difference) ( 235/1467 cases = 16%)

        (made things worse) ( 707/1467 cases = 48%)

       It was psychiatrists who could not accept these findings and as a group walked out, refusing to endorse or sign what was already a much 'toned-down' final draft report.

       Already in November 2000 the ABPI produced a glossy detailed booklet entitled 'the expert patient', stressing the importance of patient participation and input in treatment and healing processes.

       In September 2001 the DOH produced an even more comprehensive booklet entitled 'The Expert Patient: A new Approach to Chronic Disease Management for the 21st Century', the results of investigations carried out by a Task Force in which the present Chief Medical Officer, Professor Liam Donaldson, was closely involved. The CMO has since stressed this new approach time and again on many occasions.

       Surely it is time that psychiatrists took some notice and actually listened to what patients tell them. I have yet to come across a patient who complains about any treatment which works, whether this is allopathic, psychological methods (like CBT) or exercise regimes (like Graded Exercises). If it works, no-one will complain; the problem is these approaches very often don't, and this is the one and only reason why patients are so persistent intheir demands for other options and are determined to get to the real causes of their ill health. No-one has yet found one single answer to these new and difficult diseases, but one thing iscertain: psychiatrists have made things worse for many, in more ways than one.

End of Article ME-002

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The Last Word

Hello again
       It's a sentence that is worth repeating here in it's entirity: "It was psychiatrists who could not accept these findings and as a group walked out, refusing to endorse or sign what was already a much 'toned-down' final draft report.". Like a wise man once said - you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Doesn't that "walk-out" just speak volumes though for the Wessley School brigade? Somehow the words "denial", "repression" and [strangely] "anally retentive" spring easilly to mind.

       I haven't yet actually seen a copy of that DOH booklet "The Expert Patient" and, I must admit, I was very surprised to learn that such a booklet even exists! Wish I had a copy of it about 7 years ago though when having disagreed with a home-visit GP over some aspect of ME management he rather arrogantly declared "There is only one expert here". I nodded my instant and enthusiastic agreement - then added: "Yes, ...and it's me". Sufficient to say here that he wasn't at all amused by that.

       Your days of hiding the genuine physiological illness of ME/CFS under a large and self-serving blanket of authentic psychiatric-based fatigue syndromes is rapidly drawing to a close MR Wessley. Consequently, the deeper you now continue to dig yourself into your already deeply entrenched psychiatric-blanket view of ME/CFS then the easier it will be to finally bury you [and your entire misguided crew of followers] when that long overdue funeral-day at last arrives - as it surely will soon. Then even the liveliest of those "flapping chickens" will start keeling over en-masse.

Namaste

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