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January 23, 2002
Alan Gurwitt, M.D.
Every so often there is an upsurge of debate about the place of
psychological problems in regard to CFS, FM, and ME. As a psychiatrist
who has been seeing patients with these illnesses since 1986, as well as following the literature closely, I have often been embarrassed by and angry at many of my colleagues who fall in line with self-declared "experts" who see somatization everywhere.
Ever since the mid-1980's, there have been "researchers" with an uncanny knack for cornering research funds because of their already-formed biases that are in synch with the biases of the funding government organizations, who declare CFS, FM, ME to have a psychological basis or, more recently and
insidiously, avoiding specificity about etiology, indicate that CBT and
graded exercise will do the therapeutic job, thus in part implying a
major psychological causative factor.
I have noticed the following deficits in their work, their thinking,
their word choices-or should I say-choice of terms, and their research
methods:
1. They often fail to clearly distinguish between "chronic fatigue" and
"chronic fatigue syndrome". The former is a common symptom in medical
clinics that does have a high linkage to already-present psychological
problems. The latter, as we know, is a fairly specific medical condition
with an unfortunate name. Their sloppiness has led to all kinds of
trouble and misunderstanding.
2. They fail to distinguish between pre-illness psychological
functioning and post-onset occurrence of psychiatric symptoms which are
both organic and understandably reactive in origin. This error would
disappear if they did thorough psychiatric evaluations which included a
careful review of past history and current functioning, i.e., where they
really got to know their patients. Even medical students are taught how
to do this. Their failure to do proper in-depth psychiatric evaluations
in at least some of their studies is a serious error with drastic
implications.
3. Their studies make use of flawed, inappropriate, and superficial
tests of psychological state which then lead to flawed, inappropriate,
and superficial conclusions. Leonard Jason has discussed this problem in
detail. Their use of large numbers of study subjects and sophisticated
statistics give the impression that they are really scientific; in my
view it is pseudo-science.
4. They often fail to include, or to be unaware of, the mounting
medical-neurological-immunological evidence demonstrating the medical
nature of CFS/FM/ME.
5. They demonstrate instead a morbid preoccupation with psychiatric
morbidity. There are moderate and sometimes severe psychiatric conditions following onset, which as physicians and psychiatrists we need to be aware of, but there is no definitive and convincing evidence that
I am aware of indicating psychological causation [of these devastating illnesses].
(c) Alan Gurwitt, M.D.
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