Tag: CODES
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My Tour of Ireland, Through Wind and Rain; Slides of My Talk
Last month, I took a quick speaking tour around Ireland at the invitation of the Irish ME/CFS Association. I first became acquainted with Tom Kindlon, the association’s assistant chairperson, about ten years ago. I was beginning to look into the background of the PACE trial, which purported to have proven the benefits of graded exercise…
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New Paper Seeks to Reframe Poor Findings in CODES Trial of CBT for Non-Epileptic Seizures
The CODES trial investigated cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) as a treatment for dissociative seizures (DS), a sub-category of what is now called functional neurological disorder (FND). The intervention was a course of CBT specifically designed to address the variety of factors presumed to be triggering the seizures. (I have previously critiqued CODES here, here, and…
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Quartet of Trials Reveals Limitations of CBT for “Medically Unexplained Symptoms”
A year ago, I wrote a post about how the biopsychosocial ideological brigades had completed a trifecta of major studies that investigated cognitive behavior therapy for a variety of so-called “medically unexplained symptoms” (MUS). As a group, the studies demonstrated the overall ineffectiveness of CBT as a treatment for this category of disorders—despite herculean efforts…
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My Letter to Author of CODES Commentary
Earlier today, I sent the following letter to Dr David Perez, a neurologist and psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Dr Perez, an expert on functional neurological disorders, wrote a commentary for Lancet Psychiatry that accompanied the publication of the results for CODES, a major study of cognitive behavior therapy as a treatment for…
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CODES Trial Commentary Promotes ‘Eminence-Based Medicine’
By all accounts, the recently published CODES trial was the most authoritative study to date of whether cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) was an effective treatment for so-called dissociative seizures–a point confirmed in a commentary accompanying the paper in Lancet Psychiatry. Unfortunately, the CODES investigators and the commentary author seem to interpret the null results for…
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More Questions About CODES Trial of CBT for Seizures
[*In the last paragraph, I mistakenly referred to the CODES protocol rather than the CODES statistical analysis plan. I apologize for the error.] I have recently written about CODES, the high-profile clinical trial investigating whether cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) could reduce the frequency of dissociative seizures, also known as psychogenic non-epileptic seizures. The trial, published…
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Trio of Trials Shows Limits of CBT for Medically Unexplained Symptoms
Lancet Psychiatry recently published the results of a high-profile trial of cognitive behavior therapy as a treatment for so-called dissociative seizures, also known as psychogenic non-epileptic seizures. The trial, nicknamed CODES, found that CBT had no impact on seizure frequency–the primary outcome. The average number of seizures per month dropped in both the treatment and…