A review of treatment harms to patients with ME/CFS
Psychologist and researcher Dr David F Marks believes that as there is growing evidence that ME/CFS and PASC have similar symptoms “it seems highly possible that the same therapeutic approaches will be offered to patients with PASC as have already been tried with patients with ME/CFS.
It is timely to review the evidence on the potential harms of such treatments, one of which is Graded Exercise Therapy (GET) and another that is often combined with GET, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT).
Despite the evidence of physiological and cellular abnormalities in ME and CFS, these approaches follow the biopsychosocial model (BPSM) claimed by the discredited Psychosomatic School to legitimize the use of CBT and GET for patients with ME/CFS .
A recent review concluded:
The evidence …suggests that none of these psychosomatic hypotheses is empirically supported. The lack of robust supportive evidence together with the use of fallacious causal assumptions, inappropriate and harmful therapies, broken scientific principles, repeated methodological flaws and an unwillingness to share data all give the appearance of cargo cult science.
The psychosomatic approach needs to be replaced by a scientific, biologically grounded approach to MUS/ME/CFS that can be expected to provide patients with appropriate care and treatments.
Patients with MUS/ME/CFS and their families have not been treated with the dignity, respect and care that is their human right. Patients with MUS/ME/CFS and their families could consider a class action legal case against the injuring parties.”
Read the paper for full conclusions and an overview of the work of:
- Twisk and Maes (2009)
- Kindlon (2011) and (2017)
- Vink and Vink-Niese (2018)
- Geraghty and Blease (2019)
- McPhee, Baldwin, Kindlon and Hughes (2019)
- Friedberg, Sunnquist and Nacul (2020)
- NICE Draft Guidance (2020)
Treatment Harms to Patients with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/ Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, by David F Marks in Adv Bioeng Biomed Sci Res, 6(1), 01-04, Feb 2022
