4 ms·
There's an entire, and fascinating, book on psychosomatic illnesses that goes into this topic called It's All in Your Head by Suzanne O'Sullivan, an Irish neuro
by petercooper 8y ago
There's an entire, and fascinating, book on psychosomatic illnesses that goes into this topic called It's All in Your Head by Suzanne O'Sullivan, an Irish neurologist.
Most people seem to write off psychosomatic illnesses as they don't fit into their models of how the world should work, but their existence and ways to resolve them are well documented and doctors frequently find psychological or neurological ways to resolve or alleviate them (e.g. prescribing antidepressants to chronic pain sufferers).
The book also goes into how cancer can, in some circumstances, be hugely affected by the mental outlook of the patient, but for some reason this continues to be controversial in a way that 'dying of a broken heart' is not.
- agumonkey 8y agoI have negative feelings toward oncology protocols because they're not capable of explaining things to patients, so they start hopeless and pick many wrong choices after diagnosis. It's .. somehow criminal to me.
- arountheworld 8y agoPsychosomatic is the bucket where lands everything lazy doctors don't want to investigate.
- olliej 8y agoPsychosomatic is actually an interesting one -- it's not just "lazy doctors" -- there's plenty of evidence to show that the brain is totally capable of causing a range of side effects all on its own (Placebo and nocebo trials have made this clear). If you want annoying go for "Idiopathic". For example I have idiopathic optic nerve hypoplasia. The last three words mean my optic nerve is narrow than it should be - I have a gap in one quadrant of my peripheral vision - the "idiopathic" bit means they don't know why.
- taneq 8y ago> the "idiopathic" bit means they don't know why. Oooh, sort of like "not otherwise specified" meaning "dunno what's going on".
- arountheworld 8y agoI agree with you, but if there is no evidence that something is psychosomatic, the doctor shouldn't give the diagnosis that it is. If a doctor is keen on dismissing the patients I think that should be investigated and that person barred from working in the field.
- uncle_d 8y agoA Swedish study found that just a diagnosis of cancer greatly increased a person’s chances of dying in the following weeks http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/research-some-cancer-diagnoses-kill-quicker-cancer http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/research-some-cancer-diagno...