By David Tuller, DrPH
Media watchdog covers how major news articles have psychologized Long Covid
The organization Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), based in New York City, is a progressive news watchdog focused on exposing bias and censorship. FAIR recently published an article called “Media Won’t Stop Psychologizing Long Covid,” by writer and investigative journalist Justine Barron, who often covers disability-related issues. Barron’s article highlighted the trend of high-profile stories in major outlets that question whether Long Covid is really a biomedical disorder and promote so-called “biopsychosocial” interventions.
The immediate prompt for FAIR’s coverage was the most recent of these articles, published on June 1st by Wired. The author, a professor of religion at James Madison University in Virginia, had previously opined on social media that 60-80% of Long Covid cases were “psychogenic.” In the 7,600-word Wired opus, he suggested that body-mind treatments could cure the illness and that argued that angry, anti-scientific patients were blocking research progress. The piece elicited a fierce backlash—which the author smugly interpreted as confirmation of his thesis rather than as evidence that he’d written a load of crap. (I critiqued the article here and here.)
Previous iterations of this general argument had appeared over the last few years in The New Republic, New York Magazine, and Slate, among other publications. The FAIR article summed them up nicely here:
“To varying degrees, articles that psychologize Long Covid tend to acknowledge that the physical symptoms experienced by patients are real, just unlikely to be caused by the Covid virus or any other biological origin. They often point to a vague mind-body paradigm as an explanation, but one in which the mind controls the body far more than the reverse. Overall, these articles emphasize that patients would benefit more from mental health and/or social service solutions than research and medicine….These articles exploit the fact that Long Covid is a misunderstood and heterogenous illness to make it seem unintelligible and impossible.”
FAIR addresses each of the articles in turn–as critics did at the time they were published. That doesn’t mean these types of pieces won’t keep popping up. But it’s good to know they’ve drawn attention and are receiving appropriate pushback.
**********
German psychiatrists push back against the “biopsychosocial” framework
As the Wired controversy makes clear, the debate over the nature of Long Covid, ME/CFS and related illnesses remains unsettled. A German psychiatry journal, Psychiatric Practice, recently weighed in on the issue with a provocative essay called “What is the Role of “the Psyche”? Long COVID and ME/CFS as Test Cases for Evidence-Based and Patient-Centered Psychiatry and Psychotherapy.”
The full article, written by a team from the University of Leipzig’s Clinic and Polyclinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, was initially published only in German; it has now been formally translated into English. Cogent and well-reasoned, it is a robust response to efforts to frame these complex conditions as psychological or psychiatric disorders. The authors are not anti-psychiatry. But they’re against how it’s been used in this domain of medicine. *(In this paragraph, I initially indicated that the co-authors were psychiatrists, but that was an error–only the lead author is.)
The abstract clearly lays out the argument:
“The role of psychological factors in the development and course of Long Covid (LC) and Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/ Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) remains a subject of controversial debate. We argue that psychologizing LC and ME/CFS carries significant risks: it leads to potentially harmful therapies, invalidates the patients’ experience of illness, hinders effective interventions such as pacing, diverts focus from necessary physical diagnostics and treatment, disadvantages patients in medical assessments, and places a considerable additional burden on the families of affected children or other relatives. We show that many of the arguments presented for a psychological contribution are nonspecific or insufficiently supported by empirical evidence. Our essay therefore advocates for extreme caution in attributing psychological factors to these conditions, in the interest of a specific, evidence-based, and patient-centered psychiatry and psychotherapy.”
The entire piece is well worth a read. It offers a satisfying counter-push to the dishonest spin emanating from the likes of Wired.
**********
One year on, has anything happened with the UK’s “delivery plan” for ME/CFS?
Last July, health officials in the UK released a much-ballyhooed so-called “delivery plan” for addressing ME/CFS. The plan received generally poor reviews from the patient community, with the general sense that it offered lots of words but not much of substance.
One year on, The Sick Times racently posted an account from Nick Benton, a freelance writer in Stockport, England. (He has had ME since 2020 and writes about it on his Substack, The Personal ME.) His update—nothing much has changed—is sobering. Here’s the opening:
“July marks the first anniversary of the publication of the U.K. government’s delivery plan, outlining how it promises to better serve people with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). Sadly, it is not one to celebrate. So far, the plan has failed to meaningfully improve care, research, or professional understanding of the disease. It reveals that only an avalanche of political support will force real change for people with ME.
It’s no surprise that the ME community greeted the final delivery plan (FDP) with dismay. I’ve had cognitive dysfunction from ME for over five years, so reading often feels like driving a car with the handbrake on. But synthesizing the FDP was like trying to do so uphill. The actionable commitments — those with funding, timelines, and accountability attached — are few. And to make it worse, they are buried within a sea of vague, nonbinding pledges, broader government policy actions, and hollow acknowledgments of patient experiences.”
Benton’s full essay is here, under the headline: “The U.K.’s plan for ME has failed us. Members of parliament must step up.”