Trial By Error, by David Tuller
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FND Experts Agree To Correct Inflated Prevalence Claim
For years, experts in functional neurological disorder (FND) have cited a seminal study in their field to claim that the diagnosis was the second-most-common presentation at outpatient neurology clinics, with a prevalence of 16%. This claim was, and is, categorically untrue. The Scottish Neurological Symptoms Study (SNSS), which yielded multiple papers about a dozen years…
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Action For ME Report on NICE Guidelines; Brian Hughes on Myths About the Guidelines; Michael Sharpe’s San Francisco Speech
I often feel so far behind in keeping up with developments in this field. Here are a few recent items I wanted to highlight. Action For ME’s report on NHS adoption of the new NICE guidelines In October, 2021, after a protracted and highly contentious process, the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence…
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Claim that CBT Is Safe Is “Misleading,” Says Dutch Ad Group
In a recent decision, the Advertising Code Foundation in the Netherlands has criticized as “misleading” a statement on the website of the Knowledge Center for Chronic Fatigue (NKCV) touting its treatment approach as “not harmful.” The decision is something of a slap at the NKCV and its co-leader, Professor Hans Knoop, a psychologist and a…
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Author Michael Alenyikov on ME and the Writing Life
Michael Alenyikov was the first person I knew with ME, or what was then being called CFIDS—chronic fatigue immune disorder syndrome. We met in the mid-1980s in NY—we were younger then!—and we both moved to San Francisco in the 1990s. Michael trained as a clinical psychologist but switched his professional focus to writing, focusing on…
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A Letter Regarding Inflated Prevalence Rates for Functional Neurological Disorder
I have posted previously about how papers on functional neurological disorder (FND) have routinely mis-cited a seminal 2010 study in asserting that the diagnosis is the second-most-common presentation at neurology clinics, with a rate of 16%. In fact, the 2010 study found that only 5.5% had FND, the new name for the antiquated Freudian construct…
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Dr Binita Kane on Kids with Long Covid
Physician Binita Kane, a lung specialist in Manchester, England, and an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester’s School of Biological Sciences, has been outspoken on the subject of long Covid in children. Her passion about the issue has been fueled by her own daughter’s struggle with prolonged symptoms after an acute coronavirus infection.…
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Psychologist Brian Hughes Discusses His New Book, “A Conceptual History of Psychology”
My friend and colleague Brian Hughes, a professor of psychology at the University of Galway in Ireland, recently published his latest book—“A Conceptual History of Psychology: The Mind Through Time.” Rather than dating the field of psychology to the creation and growth of university departments of psychology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,…
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Dutch CBT Study for Long Covid Proves that Unblinded Studies with Subjective Outcomes Generate Positive Reports
Three years ago, I wrote a blog post about a problematic Dutch study that had been funded by a major health agency and was being led by Hans Knoop, a professor of medical psychology at Amsterdam University Medical Centers. The study sought to test whether a course of cognitive behavior therapy starting months after a…
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Questions About the Prevalence of Functional Neurological Disorder and the Research on Hoover’s Sign for Functional Leg Weakness
(This is a long-ish post. Sorry! It covers two complicated issues. I want to thank an intrepid source for help with this.) I have great sympathy for patients diagnosed with functional neurological disorder (FND). Their symptoms can be seriously disabling and their plight has long been neglected and dismissed by the medical establishment. When I…
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A Day in the Life of Anil van der Zee
It is May 12th–ME International Awareness Day. (Or ME/CFS International Awareness Day if you’re the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Washington, DC, #MEAction and Body Politic have organized a protest and press conference “to demand bold, urgent governmental action for the millions of people living with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), Long COVID, and…
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Mt Sinai’s David Putrino on Long Covid and Functional Neurological Disorder
David Putrino is a neuroscientist and physical therapist at New York’s Mt Sinai Health System, where he is director of rehabilitation innovation. Over the last three years, he has worked extensively with patients experiencing prolonged symptoms after an acute bout of Covid-19, or what has become known as long Covid (LC). Last spring, I interviewed…
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“Long Haul” Author Ryan Prior on Why Long Covid Is a “Political” Term and Related Stuff
Last month, The Nation published a wide-ranging overview of the impact of long Covid on the United States by Fiona Lowenstein and Ryan Prior. Called The Long Covid Revolution, the article proposed a number of steps for addressing the fallout and highlighted the critical role of grass-roots patient movements in pushing for change. Lowenstein is…