Hysteria to long Covid is discussed at length here. I am pasting the link to help understanding. The roots of this are very disturbing, and the BPS model is replicating Freud in a problematic way. Freud was a neurologist, and "hysteria"'s first case study was "Dora", who became ill following the "Russian Flu"—which many epidemiologists now think was actually a coronavirus.
My ME/CFS started in 1998, but was not diagnosed until 2024; until then I was told „it is all in your head“. No matter how hard I tried to heal my psyche or body mind, I did not get better - on the contrary I grew steadily worse because the root cause of my chronic illness was not identified. This avenue is not misleading patients, it is actually harmful for us!
I saw Mendenhall on a panel at an anthropology conference last fall, and was dismayed that there was no mention of the way that biomedical research has continued to advance and is showing more clues (comorbidities with hypermobility and connective tissue disorders, differences in clotting, etc.). It’s easy to think something is produced by stress if you don’t dig deeper.
Thank you for a very interesting and balanced review. I’m assuming the book was completed before the initial DeCodeME results were announced in the UK. If so it is a book that sounds like it had good intentions but will perpetuate the false narrative about ME, and therefore about those with Long Covid who fit the ME diagnostic criteria too, as it seems from this is overview, it is based on out of date research and opinion.
Thank you for this! Of course, there are loads of studies in the last couple of years discovering that long COVID does, in fact, leave physical marks on the body. It seems like a new one is coming out every week these days. The folks who continue to say that there's nothing they can test to find anything wrong with us frustrate me so much. We're coming to find that reflects a lack of imagination on the part of such researchers, rather than 'nothing physically wrong with us.'
Thanks for this review. I was excited to read this book, as a 3 year long covid gal. Now it seems like it isn't the balanced history of invisible illness that I thought it would be. I am not exactly sure what i believe about trauma possibly causing my illness before Covid--I had some of the symptoms of ME, but didn't realize it until I became ill with LC and I was reading all that I could on the subject, as those symptoms were exacerbated by my having Covid twice.
What I find here so astoundingly missing is the science. At this point there are literally hundreds of thousands of papers on COVID, long COVID, and ME combined. There are literally hours and hours and hours of research symposiums detailing the current scientific and biological understanding of these conditions which no one from the research space is claiming come from the “bodymind” in any way. A cursory watch of anything from PolyBio or UCSF for example should stop these “bodymind” arguments in their tracks. The science has in fact incredibly progressed and it is a disservice to communities of people living with these conditions that it is not well translated to the public for gains in greater, global understanding. It just feels wildly unnecessary at this point to point to anything other than the actual biological evidence at hand, especially because so few outside of our communities know about it or understand it. These are diseases that share pathophysiology with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, HIV, and Cancer for example. What are we even doing giving any other arguments the light of day. It is deeply disappointing.
Hysteria to long Covid is discussed at length here. I am pasting the link to help understanding. The roots of this are very disturbing, and the BPS model is replicating Freud in a problematic way. Freud was a neurologist, and "hysteria"'s first case study was "Dora", who became ill following the "Russian Flu"—which many epidemiologists now think was actually a coronavirus.
https://open.substack.com/pub/sceneofbecoming/p/long-covid-is-hysteriabut-not-the?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer
Great review - thank you!
My ME/CFS started in 1998, but was not diagnosed until 2024; until then I was told „it is all in your head“. No matter how hard I tried to heal my psyche or body mind, I did not get better - on the contrary I grew steadily worse because the root cause of my chronic illness was not identified. This avenue is not misleading patients, it is actually harmful for us!
Thank you for this review!
I saw Mendenhall on a panel at an anthropology conference last fall, and was dismayed that there was no mention of the way that biomedical research has continued to advance and is showing more clues (comorbidities with hypermobility and connective tissue disorders, differences in clotting, etc.). It’s easy to think something is produced by stress if you don’t dig deeper.
Thank you for a very interesting and balanced review. I’m assuming the book was completed before the initial DeCodeME results were announced in the UK. If so it is a book that sounds like it had good intentions but will perpetuate the false narrative about ME, and therefore about those with Long Covid who fit the ME diagnostic criteria too, as it seems from this is overview, it is based on out of date research and opinion.
Appreciate Dr Haussman's insight and perspective.
Thank you for this! Of course, there are loads of studies in the last couple of years discovering that long COVID does, in fact, leave physical marks on the body. It seems like a new one is coming out every week these days. The folks who continue to say that there's nothing they can test to find anything wrong with us frustrate me so much. We're coming to find that reflects a lack of imagination on the part of such researchers, rather than 'nothing physically wrong with us.'
Thanks for this review. I was excited to read this book, as a 3 year long covid gal. Now it seems like it isn't the balanced history of invisible illness that I thought it would be. I am not exactly sure what i believe about trauma possibly causing my illness before Covid--I had some of the symptoms of ME, but didn't realize it until I became ill with LC and I was reading all that I could on the subject, as those symptoms were exacerbated by my having Covid twice.
What I find here so astoundingly missing is the science. At this point there are literally hundreds of thousands of papers on COVID, long COVID, and ME combined. There are literally hours and hours and hours of research symposiums detailing the current scientific and biological understanding of these conditions which no one from the research space is claiming come from the “bodymind” in any way. A cursory watch of anything from PolyBio or UCSF for example should stop these “bodymind” arguments in their tracks. The science has in fact incredibly progressed and it is a disservice to communities of people living with these conditions that it is not well translated to the public for gains in greater, global understanding. It just feels wildly unnecessary at this point to point to anything other than the actual biological evidence at hand, especially because so few outside of our communities know about it or understand it. These are diseases that share pathophysiology with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, HIV, and Cancer for example. What are we even doing giving any other arguments the light of day. It is deeply disappointing.