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Maybe they're correct? Mental illness is complicated and it can create real physiological symptoms. Someone with extreme anxiety will feel heart palpitations,

Maybe they're correct? Mental illness is complicated and it can create real physiological symptoms. Someone with extreme anxiety will feel heart palpitations, fatigue, and a bunch of other symptoms despite the cause not being an actual underlying disease. Is it always the case that there's no underlying disease? No, but is it often the case? Maybe? Those that make it part of their identity and reinforce it make it worse. I don't know what's going on here, but if I had to place a bet it's on the side of skepticism wrt 'long covid' in most cases.

bryanlarsen 2y ago
I have two friends with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (aka chronic fatigue) at life-ruining levels, likely from the 2009 swine flu. To very mentally healthy women both before and after, and physically very healthy before.
interroboink 2y ago
Yeah it's tricky; I imagine it's a mix of things going on. Suppose 80% of cases are fake. If we see that, and dismiss the whole thing as a result, that leaves the 20% of real cases ignored/dismissed. That could still be a lot of people who we are now wrongly telling it's all in their mind.
2924010774 2y ago
As someone who has a chronic illness myself, I think it's absolutely important to consider anxiety as a potential source. I'd much prefer if meditation or therapy would fix my health issues rather than something more expensive/annoying/side-effecting. My complaint is that "this is caused by anxiety" is treated as an assumption, rather than as a potential cause to be investigated. Moreover, I've seen doctors use anxiety as a way to write-off and dismiss a patient ("it's all in your head" shouldn't be dismissive; it's still something that needs to be treated). Sometimes a doctor might say, "why don't you try exercising three times a week for three weeks and tell me if that makes a difference," to test if that makes a difference. But I've never heard a doctor say "try meditating every day and then we'll see if that will stop your fainting episodes." All that is to say, I wish doctors viewed anxiety as a cause to be investigated, rather than a dead end that they can use to ignore a patient.
- homefree 2y ago
  Yeah I generally agree with that. The anxiety example comes from personal experience for me where I thought I was having some medical problem which ended up ultimately being fairly extreme anxiety. Learning how to cope with that was a form of treatment the medical system is ill-equipped to handle, but in my case had I gone down the path of "this is definitely a non-anxiety related illness" I would have been much worse off. It's still genuinely hard for me to personally tell the difference and sometimes I think something is anxiety when it ends up being an actual virus (or the opposite).

bryanlarsen 2y ago

I have two friends with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (aka chronic fatigue) at life-ruining levels, likely from the 2009 swine flu. To very mentally healthy women both before and after, and physically very healthy before.

interroboink 2y ago

Yeah it's tricky; I imagine it's a mix of things going on. Suppose 80% of cases are fake. If we see that, and dismiss the whole thing as a result, that leaves the 20% of real cases ignored/dismissed. That could still be a lot of people who we are now wrongly telling it's all in their mind.

2924010774 2y ago

As someone who has a chronic illness myself, I think it's absolutely important to consider anxiety as a potential source. I'd much prefer if meditation or therapy would fix my health issues rather than something more expensive/annoying/side-effecting. My complaint is that "this is caused by anxiety" is treated as an assumption, rather than as a potential cause to be investigated. Moreover, I've seen doctors use anxiety as a way to write-off and dismiss a patient ("it's all in your head" shouldn't be dismissive; it's still something that needs to be treated). Sometimes a doctor might say, "why don't you try exercising three times a week for three weeks and tell me if that makes a difference," to test if that makes a difference. But I've never heard a doctor say "try meditating every day and then we'll see if that will stop your fainting episodes." All that is to say, I wish doctors viewed anxiety as a cause to be investigated, rather than a dead end that they can use to ignore a patient.

homefree 2y ago
Yeah I generally agree with that. The anxiety example comes from personal experience for me where I thought I was having some medical problem which ended up ultimately being fairly extreme anxiety. Learning how to cope with that was a form of treatment the medical system is ill-equipped to handle, but in my case had I gone down the path of "this is definitely a non-anxiety related illness" I would have been much worse off. It's still genuinely hard for me to personally tell the difference and sometimes I think something is anxiety when it ends up being an actual virus (or the opposite).