Diane O'Leary, PhD @DianeOLeary Twitter profile

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

4 years

So pleased to see my article come out in Synthese, "Medicine's metaphysical morass: How confusion about dualism threatens public health". Misunderstanding about the mind/body problem is harmful. #philosophyofmind #philosophyofmedicine #bioethics #medicine

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

Wouldn’t it be helpful for medical records to include the patient’s perspective? Why is the patient’s voice silenced in the record?

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

1 year

I wrote an opinion piece about #MedicalGaslighting that came out today in @CNN . It's time for #medicine to take this problem seriously. "This is not about women’s hurt feelings. This is about gratuitous death and suffering on the basis of gender."

Opinion: Here’s why #MedicalGaslighting has taken social media by storm | CNN

With the term “medical gaslighting” we’ve finally named medicine’s gender problem, but it’s time to get clear about the seriousness of this form of gender bias, writes Diane O’Leary.

www.cnn.com

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

1/ I’ve been concerned that journalists have decided they’re fit to make credible contributions to medical issues like #longcovid – and this piece by @nataliesurely convinces me the problem is both bizarre & directly threatening to public health...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

1 year

Another article trying to tie #longcovid to mental illness. Incredibly, @grace_huckins quotes 2 leading LC scientists stating that it’s dangerous to encourage a tie to mental illness in media, but Huckins thinks she's qualified to reject that concern...🧵

The Conversation That’s Hard to Have About Long COVID

There are good reasons to consider the role of mental illness in the disease. It’s still hard to discuss.

slate.com

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

5 years

The sad stories at #PatientsAreNotFaking don't arise from Drs burnout, or lack of time or info @bruce_y_lee . The field of #PsychosomaticMedicine has spent decades training Drs to see unexplained symptoms as psychiatric problems, discouraging investigation. This has to stop!

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

5/ There are more than 20,000 peer reviewed scientific articles confirming biological disease - and there are piles of journalistic crap from people like you who insist against all evidence that there's a debate going on. Show us the articles that constitute this debate!

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

3/ First, @nataliesurely why aren’t you asking the most obvious question: WHAT IS THE SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS? The answer on that is so clear that among scientists this "debate" was resolved long ago: Long covid is biomedical disease(s)....

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

9/ More than half of those w autoimmune disease report they've been denied the medical care they need bcz drs mistakenly attributed their symptoms to FND or some other psychosomatic disorder. Ever thought about how you contribute to this unnecessary physical suffering?...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

13/ Then ask yourself this: is it ethical for you to present these women's suffering for public scrutiny and judgement - as if the science on their condition is beside the point? No. It surely is not ethical. It's downright ugly./

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

4/ The BPS researchers you spin as authoritative have never published an article on #LongCovid with scientific impact. Not one of them. Ever. There has never been a peer reviewed challenge from these “experts” to the scientific consensus on biomedical causes for long covid(s)...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

8/ Have you never met a seriously ill woman who could not get medical care bcz drs won't take her symptoms seriously? Never known one who died? Never read @MayaDusenbury ’s book? Never looked into diagnostic delay for women's diseases, like autoimmune disease, w 75% women?...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

6/ Second, you’re mistaken on the history: hysteria was never rejected. It was renamed for the explicit purpose of deceiving women into psychological treatment without informed consent. This is a matter of record. Want citations?...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

2/ Shure has done a lot of research, but w no academic rigor or caution. More than that, she's got a decisive ax to grind in support of @awgaffney ’s #longcovid agenda. You couldn’t grind this ax through peer review, but you can grind away in @newrepublic , so here we are...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

1 year

This editorial is nonsense. To be clear, the claim here is that #LongCovid is psychosomatic. Authors' spin on that term does not arise from "progress". It arises from a plan in research to rebrand the term so that patients won't get angry & object...🧵

Opinion: Long COVID highlights why we need to overhaul the term ‘psychosomatic’

Many cases of long COVID have been associated with signs of illness that are difficult to observe

www.theglobeandmail.com

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

1 year

Drs don't #gaslight women bcz of personal bias. They're explicitly trained to dismiss women's symptoms regularly, TEN TIMES more often than they dismiss men's! Thx to @CNNOpinion for finally letting this get said out loud & to @MeganEDoherty for fighting to get it said before me.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

12/ Maybe it would be useful to ask yourself why you think the question of #longcovid should be settled by lay speculation rather than by science...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

7/ FND carried on that legacy with the explicit decision to use pseudo-philosophical jargon to convince women with hysteria that they’d been diagnosed with brain disease. DM me for citations on that...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

11/ Go take a look at "Somatic symptom disorder" on Medscape, telling drs to diagnose 10 females as psychosomatic for every 1 male. Citations for that astonishingly dangerous directive? Zero. Nothing. Not one single study cited to support that figure. Pulled it out of the sky...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

3 years

Shocking to see @bmj_latest publish a piece by a journalist that misrepresents scientific opinion on the construct of "chronic fatigue syndrome". This kind of spin threatens the health and safety of #longcovid and #MECFS patients. My Rapid Response:

Tell the Truth About the Scientific Challenge to “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome”

www.bmj.com

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

10/ Have you looked to see what the BPS research has to say about how we might avoid these unnecessary harms? Go and look. Nothing there. Not a single study. Zero effort to improve or even investigate the role for psychosomatic medicine in gender healthcare injustice...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

There are 3 problems w Gaffney’s article, each one obvious enough, and dangerous enough, for @TheAtlantic to flag before publication. First, how could any editor publish the sentence, “a false separation of brain and body has long plagued medicine”?...

What Doctors Still Don’t Understand About Long COVID

Even mild COVID-19 is at least correlated with a startlingly wide spectrum of seemingly every illness. We need a much better taxonomy to address people’s suffering.

www.theatlantic.com

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

Everyone involved here is well meaning & clear that LC is bio disease. It’s impossible to overstate, though, how damaging this material is to LC patients. First, you have no science to support the claim that LC patients are more often traumatized or type A than anyone else…1/

Dr Asad Khan FRCP FRACP 🇵🇸🇳🇿🇮🇳🇬🇧#pwLC

@doctorasadkhan

2 years

I have wondered about this as well… hasn’t gone down well with some commenters but it is interesting at the very least. #LongCovid

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

10 months

I have a new oped at Cognoscenti @cogwbur today. "Doctors who attribute women’s symptoms to their psyches don't do so because they’re personally gender-biased. They do it because they’re trained to do it." To fix this problem - revise the training! ...1/

Here's a bold solution to women's health care: Train doctors to listen to women

The Biden administration is trying to improve women's health care by accelerating research on women and disease. But the initiative is ignoring the real problem, writes Diane O’Leary. We need to...

www.wbur.org

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

5 years

1. This is a very useful thread #MedTwitter because it tracks common reasoning errors that lead doctors to readily accept psychosomatic dx for #MEcfs and other contested conditions like #EhlersDanlos , #mito , #dysautonomia , #LymeDisease , etc.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

6 years

@BBCTomFeilden Angry patients are the least of Sharpe's worries. His real concern is this: US health organizations with far more authority than he has now unanimously agree that the Sharpe/Wessely program is no longer a credible approach to #MECFS . That's the real story. Cover that.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

6 years

It is blatantly inaccurate for @Reuters to suggest "scientists" remain unified about psych management of #MECFS . The old dispute between patients and professionals is now a dispute between professionals: Wessely and Sharpe vs the US NIH and IOM.

Sick and tired: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say

Scientists researching treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome say they face online abuse and harassment. Some are leaving the field

www.reuters.com

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

8 months

@IMEstudents 1/ Wessely has written 1 paper involving ethics, "To Tell or Not to Tell", where he states that he's uninformed abt the field. Then he considers hysteria ("a tough old bird"), and asks whether drs should tell patients the truth abt that diagnosis...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

1 year

Michael Sharpe's research has been discredited by Natl Academy of Sciences @theNASciences , @NIH , @NICEComms & @AHRQNews . What does it say to the public when the American Psychiatric Association @APApsychiatric honors this work w an achievement award - and no further comment?...

Psychiatric News

@PsychiatricNews

1 year

Michael Sharpe, M.D., recipient of this year's Adolf Meyer Award, said psychiatry needs to define specifically what it can bring to the care of medically ill patients and prove its value in robust clinical trials. #PsychTwitter #MedTwitter #APAAM23

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

4 years

“When we find ourselves in a framework that suggests the possibility of medical need is somehow beside the point..it’s time to reconsider our conceptual foundations” My new article on philosophical confusion in #MECFS care #PhilosophyOfMedicine #bioethics

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

6 years

#pwme should not be discouraged by recent press about Sharpe's & Wessely's struggles with "trolls". If they could publicly challenge the science behind the new biological approach in US and Denmark they would - but they cannot. The professional tide has shifted now.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

1 year

9/ but somehow journalists feel emboldened to take risks with millions of people's lives, as if their own intuitions have scientific standing. What is going on here? HEY JOURNALISTS - DO YOUR JOB! When you report on medicine, report science! You are not qualified to speculate. /

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

3 years

I'd like to understand why there's no pushback from #MedTwitter on this article, which relies on sarcasm to discredit a patient & patient community. Is this an honorable physician? Why is there no demand for an examination of the science - or for honesty? #bioethics

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

8 months

@IMEstudents 2/ He concludes by advising that drs should deliberately mislead patients so they'll comply w treatment, w advice on how best to deceive. (That advice led to the construct of #FND .) Wessely never considers the right to informed consent...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

5 years

4. Psychosomatic dx is not benign. Misdx obstructs access to med care for patients in need – and that is a harm you are pledged to avoid above all others. Further, you do harm every time you lead a patient to feel psychologically responsible for a biological disease.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

1 year

4/ The most informative thing abt this article is what it lacks. There's not a word abt the thousands of studies that confirm biological disease in patients w long covid. So you know these are not serious conclusions. These are not people who carefully weigh all the evidence...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

5 months

For those convinced that female hysteria is a thing of the past - look. Outside of MH care, ppl think hysteria was rejected long ago as a grossly sexist physical threat to women w disease. Inside MH care, it's "Hey this great book from the 80s helps you treat hysterical women!"

Mark L. Ruffalo

@MarkLRuffalo

5 months

"Hysteria behaves as if anatomy did not exist or as though it had no knowledge of it." - Freud

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

3 years

@morganstephensa @timkaine Why does a senator have to introduce legislation to get the CDC to inform the public about long Covid? The situation is truly surreal. What explanation do we have for the CDC's silence on a preventable post-viral disease wreaking havoc on millions of people's lives?

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

1 year

8/ Why does this matter? Since drs in practice have no guidance on handling the millions suffering w LC, media plays an outsized role in patient care. Leading LC scientists tell these journalists again & again that these articles lead to real harm for real people...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

1 year

5/ The main thing to know about media articles on #LongCovid is that psychosomatic med no longer follows basic rules of med science. For 20 yrs the field has focused primarily on rebranding, so these are not reports on new science. They're spin. Marketing is the main event./

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

3 years

1/ @GeorgeMonbiot As the Human Plague, you've done the world a real service! You've forced us to recognize that the psychosomatic side of the #LongCovid debate truly believes they should control the flow of public info on the condition, for the public's own good.

George Monbiot

@GeorgeMonbiot

3 years

How I became a human plague – and stumbled into one of the most astonishing scientific stories I’ve ever encountered. My column. Plus thread.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

3 years

There's a problem with the scientific process on Long Covid & ME/CFS. The pipeline from science to professional informedness has broken down, bcz HCPs actually prefer their personal opinions on these conditions. Newsflash: research on both conditions has confirmed bio disease.

Adam W Gaffney

@awgaffney

3 years

We will no doubt see more and more of this sort of article in coming days, suggesting that exercise-based physical rehabilitative care for Long Covid is not helpful, even detrimental or dangerous. You wouldn't know how controversial this was from this...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

5 years

Why are so many medical professionals reluctant to speak out about scientific inaccuracies in the recent media campaign against "online activism" about #MEcfs ? Praise to @bendymarsh for a statement we should be hearing from @theNAMedicine and @NIHdirector . #MedTwitter

Dr Ben Marsh 💙

@bendymarsh

5 years

As a scientist & a specialist doctor, I find the comparison in this ⁦ @ReutersUK ⁩ article of those who doubt & question the deeply flawed #PACEtrial with Climate change deniers & the anti-vaccine campaigners deeply wrong & insulting.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

8 months

@IMEstudents 3/ or the profound disrespect of patients autonomy that arises in every case where a dr lies to a patient abt diagnosis. He never considers ethical ramifications of advising neurologists to abandon the most basic demands of medical ethics with this patient group...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

3 years

1/6 The 11th-hour halt to publication of the #ME /CFS guideline has been so very difficult for the patient community. It's particularly hard that there's been so little clarity about why this has happened and what it will take to move forward. Imho...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

5 years

3. No doctor should have to be told to err on the side of medical caution. Your job requires (a) humility about the limits of dx science and (b) historical awareness of immense suffering caused by psychological explanations for #MS #epilepsy #PepticUlcer #Parkinsons #lupus etc.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

Oh wow. @philtaufiq has translated my IAI article, "Medicine's Bad Philosophy Threatens Your Health" into Indonesian! Revision to medicine's picture of dualism is long overdue - wonderful to see this kind of interest in the issue.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

5 years

1/5 There's a media war going on in medicine & it's not a good look. @Reuters @LondonTimes @guardian @psychtoday recently published related articles that contradict the conclusions of NIH & CDC without informing the public. What do you make of this #MedTwitter and #bioethics ?...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

5 years

This article on misdiagnosis of #hysteria or #FND in women is so important, but this is not about doctors' personal biases! In #MedEd and guidelines doctors are explicitly trained to apply these diagnoses mainly to women. #MedTwitter #WomensHealth

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

5 years

Here is the question @profmsharpe : Do you charge that the National Academy of Sciences is unscientific? The AHRQ? The NIH? These organizations share the position of the patients you charge with anti-science, so this is implied by your public position. Can you clarify?

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

5 years

For those who have trouble imagining that psychosomatic diagnosis, or FND diagnosis, is causing very serious harm, consider these women:

Life at stake: Doctor pleads case for desperate patient

Steph Aston has been diagnosed with a life-threatening disease - but she can't get help.

www.nzherald.co.nz

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

8 months

@MatthewJDalby @IMEstudents It's actually VERY important for @IMEStudents to study Wessely's work. It's the best possible lesson on how power can derail the basic ideals of #MedicalEthics in practice. Who among those attending this conference has the courage to tell the truth about this paper?

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

6 years

Denmark's decision to reclassify #MECFS as a medical disease is monumental - because Denmark is the home of "bodily distress syndrome" #BDS , which has "captured" contested conditions as psychiatric for decades. This leaves @WHO with pressing questions:

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

5 years

8. You might also find this one useful. It examines reasoning errors in management of medically unexplained symptoms, and the clinical and ethical harms they routinely cause. #MedTwitter

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

1 year

2/ "Progress" in psychosomatic research in the last 20 years has primarily been about rebranding. Convince people that psychosomatic conditions are brain problems, then they'll comply with psych treatment. Is it true that we "now know" these are problems w brain function? No...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

8 months

@IMEstudents 7/ that this paper directly advices drs to embrace unethical patient care without even bothering to support that recommendation with ethical arguments. Ethics students: you need to read this paper as if a first-year student wrote it and ask: would you give this a passing grade?

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

Second, Gaffney encourages clinicians to leap from “symptoms could not be explained by test results” to “symptoms have psychosocial causes”. #MedTwitter , does that look like good diagnostic reasoning to you?... 4/

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

People, the brain is a body part! No one in medicine or philosophy has ever been plagued by separation of body parts. We struggle with mind & body because mind is NOT a body part. Does it matter that Gaffney is terrible at amateur philosophy?... 2/

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

8 months

@IMEstudents 6/ No bioethicist besides myself has ever considered the arguments in this paper, the harm it's done to patients, to women, to neurology, to the patient-doctor relationship. Because Wessely is highly respected, no one has had the courage to say...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

8 months

@IMEstudents 4/ and he never considers how it might be socially unjust to lead drs to abandon truth telling, informed consent, and respect for patient autonomy in a patient group of predominantly women. This paper has had a massive impact on medicine's approach to undiagnosed symptoms...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

6 years

Recent articles about Wessely's and Sharpe's work on #MECFS don't even attempt to stand against the trend of biological care that's now taking hold across the globe. Instead they look for personal sympathy. This is a very good sign.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

5 years

7. This paper of mine spells out clinical & ethical problems with “prove it’s not psychological” in a way that applies to all contested conditions with substantial debate about biological causes, like #EhlersDanlos #mito #POTS #LymeDisease etc #MedTwitter

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

3 years

How could it possibly be disrespectful for two (male) drs to tell millions of (mostly female) patients that they’re confused about their suffering and disability? Dr will help you, dear, because you do have trouble distinguishing your feelings from your body. Poor jumbled women!

Adam W Gaffney

@awgaffney

3 years

Long Covid is complicated, but better treatment for it doesn't have to be. From me and the wonderful @DrZackaryBerger .

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

8 months

@IMEstudents 5/ that is, MUS. More than any other paper, it has sanctioned routine violation of the rights of women with undiagnosed symptoms, as if gender somehow explains why it would be ok to abandon medical ethics with a legally competent patient group...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

What would medicine look like if we construed every case of lack of evidence as a case of psychosocial causes? Every disease you recognize, @awgaffney , came to you courtesy of clinicians who resisted the urge to equate their lack of understanding with absence of disease... 5/

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

5 years

2. Start with the duty that defines your profession @strauss_matt - to ensure that every patient with a need for med care (medical testing, treatment, or support) receives it when she seeks it from you. Mistaken psychosomatic dx violates that duty in every case where it occurs.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

6 years

The conclusion of an article by current leaders in psychiatry & neurology - who openly advocate for the construct of #Hysteria with zero awareness of #SocialJustice concerns. On #InternationalWomensDay it's time to see this clearly, and to stand united against it.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

6 years

Why has #bioethics been so reluctant to weigh in on public debate about the right to medical care for #ME (aka "chronic fatigue syndrome" or #SEID ), especially now that #NIH and NAM see it as a serious biological disease? See my paper in Bioethics:

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

3 years

This misrepresentation of the facts is shameful from a scientist. The ME/CFS guideline is based on an independent scientific review of current research, performed twice. Its conclusions are the same as the last FIVE independent reviews of the evidence by scientists elsewhere…1/

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

5 years

5. Medicine isn’t just about finding the right answers. It’s about asking the right questions. “Can you prove condition X is not psychological?” is always confused because psychosomatic dx can't be falsified. That’s why philosophers of science see it as paradigm for pseudoscience

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

6 years

I'm pleased to see my blog @JME_BMJ today: "It's time to pay attention to 'chronic fatigue syndrome'". Contributions to this debate from #Bioethics are long overdue. Those from #PsychosomaticMedicine must now address medical risk.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

4 years

Hearty congratulations to the community of #pwme for the hard-earned win of the #NICEguideline for #MECFS . This is an admission of error about the quintessential psychosomatic diagnosis, from the conceptual home of #PsychosomaticMedicine . It will reverberate around the world.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

5 years

6. On #MEcfs : It’s your job to know that the Nat Ac of Sciences, NIH, CDC, HHS have examined the biological research and have each reversed the conclusion that it’s psychological. It’s fine to be a novice, but if you are it’s unreasonable to publicly challenge that conclusion.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

5 years

It’s important @sapinker to note for the record that you’ve unknowingly endorsed an alternate facts version of science on #MEcfs . Millions are harmed when you endorse a catchy narrative rather than looking into the facts. Activists have actually been vindicated by science.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

1 year

@wrichars @CNN Yeah I'm ok with that connection. Medical gaslighting leads people (women esp) to mistrust medicine, medical science, science in general. I mean, if drs aren't scientifically cautious when your health is on the line, science is not working! Seems like a common takeaway.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

1 year

2/ The article opens with a horrendous misunderstanding about the word "psychosomatic". Roberts, a scientist studying ties between mental illness & bio disease, put a disclaimer on her LC research stating that it does not support the idea that LC is psychosomatic. Bizarrely...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

1 year

7/ We also get some old quotes about ME/CFS by British psychiatrists. Hutchins fails to point out that (a) none of these people have managed to get the idea of LC as mental illness past peer review, (b) their quotes about ME/CFS have been thoroughly discredited by NIH & IOM...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

Finally, gaslighting would not be an everyday problem for LC patients if they were not mostly women. When you publicly state that most LC patients had previous trauma or type A, you sanction the unspoken tie between LC and hysteria…5/

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

1 year

@Molbaas @CNN Oh no, it's definitely not the only factor. But it's the only factor that's explicit in medical training. Doctors aren't predisposed to gaslight women because of personal bias. They're trained to attribute women's symptoms to their psyches as a matter of routine.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

1 year

I'm excited to be speaking at the RME conference on #MEcfs & #LongCovid in October! Really hoping I can get there in person. I'll be laying out some new work on clinical practice: "An Ethics Based Approach to Management of ME/CFS and Long Covid". Attend online!

Tom Kindlon

@TomKindlon

1 year

October 11-12 #MyalgicE conference in Stockholm, Göteborg & online, organised by Scandinavian patient organisations. Speakers are: @BhupeshPrusty /Dr Eirini Apostolou/ @microbeminded2 / @DianeOLeary /Dr Nigel Speight/Dr Anne Kielland #PwME #MEcfs #CFS

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

8/ Legitimate diagnosis is grounded on positive scientific evidence, not pseudo-philosophical hand waving. It is characterized by rigorous attention to avoidance of error. Gaffney’s proposal falls so far short of this bar that we should all be astonished to see it in print. /

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

1 year

5/The article then sets out to show that the reason why we have no science supporting the idea of LC as a mental illness is because the scientific community lacks Hutchins' personal insight on the issue. I'm not kidding - that's the claim! So...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

1 year

3/ Huckins then insists that Roberts, the expert, is using the word 'psychosomatic' incorrectly, as if psychosomatic conditions are "fake". In reality, it's Hutchins who uses the word incorrectly, so she fails to understand what the disclaimer actually means...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

It doesn’t matter whether you see a tie between LC & hysteria (thru trauma). Others do, & they won’t see your nuance. In the end, you have no idea whether trauma & type A are unusually common in patients w LC! What you lose with this talk is so much greater than what you gain.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

5 years

Here's the core question @HenrikVogt : Why aren't you concerned about medical risk with ME/CFS patients as you would be with any other group? If you're mistaken about psych etiology, then millions of med patients in need have been denied med care and research for decades.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

As Gaffney has (finally) conceded, many cases of long covid pose threats to life & many involve severe physical suffering & disability. When you encourage psychosomatic diagnosis w/o strict safety cautions you encourage mistaken denial of med care to patients who need it... 7/

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

3 years

This fantastic article offers the big picture on gaslighting of #LongCovid patients. Most valuable is its awareness that the problem is not unique to LC. This nonsense has infected medicine so deeply for so long that we do not even recognize it as an injustice to #women . #MedEd

Mike Mariani

@mikesmariani

3 years

My piece for @guardian on Long Covid, the incredible work of the Patient Led Research Collaborative ( @patientled ), and the past and present of medical gaslighting was published today:

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

1 year

4/ The disclaimer marks the difference btwn "mental illness contributes to development of a serious bio disease called LC" & "mental illness makes people think they have a serious disease when they don't". Huckins is so uninformed abt medicine that she can't see the difference...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

5 years

@jenbrea I believe we can fix this problem - because it's not caused by doctors' personal biases or by lack of diversity. It's caused by explicit gender directives for every form of psychosomatic diagnosis. These have no scientific basis. We need to campaign to have them removed.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

5 years

The term "functional" was chosen after extensive research on techniques and terms that will leave patients less likely to create conflict about psychosomatic diagnosis. The most effective technique supported by this research is "etiological ambiguity" in discussion with patients.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

@doctorasadkhan @bmj_latest This is so moving, Asad. Precise and poignant. This kind of writing does so much for so many.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

Hell yes it matters - because this article tells clinicians that they too should rely on nonsense philosophy when they make decisions about care for people who suffer from long covid... 3/

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

5 years

2/5 All 4 articles present one position on patient care as "scientific" & the alternative as "anti-science". Unfortunately the "anti-science" position is the view of the National Academy of Sciences, @NIH @AHRQNews & @CDCgov . All 4 articles fail to note that fact...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

5 years

I just discovered this 2018 article on mistaken psychosomatic diagnosis in women. These always miss the central point, the point that should make this issue the most pressing public health concern of our time... #WomensHealth #pwme #EDS #Endo #Fibro

9 Rounds of Electroshock Therapy. 6 Years Lost. All Because Her Doctors Got It Horribly Wrong.

This is what happens when medical professionals don't believe women.

www.cosmopolitan.com

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

1 year

6/ she quotes several very highly esteemed LC researchers insisting it's a bio disease that drs must take seriously. She counters that with one doctor, Gaffney, who's not qualified to do science in this area, and a pop article by his wife in New Republic...

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

5 years

#Doctors are commonly encouraged to be confident about psychosomatic dx - but more than half of #autoimmune disease patients report facing this error (AARDA). This new study shows the same figure with #adrenalinsufficiency . #MedTwitter #MedEd

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

@lpscheun @nataliesurely Sorry I’m not following you. I’m not doubting that there are psychosocial conditions. I’m pointing out science on LC unequivocally supports bio disease. When you favor a scientifically unsupported BPS account of womens diseases, that’s gender healthcare injustice. It’s dangerous.

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

5 years

Do studies actually show that women suffer from "all in your head" more often than men? No! They show that drs do follow their gender-biased training. It's time to end gender imbalance in directives for psychosomatic diagnosis. Pls retweet! #MedTwitter #MedEd #WomensHealth

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

6 years

Are new constructs for diagnosing #psychosomatic symptoms supported by science? See my paper “Bodily distress syndrome: Concerns about scientific credibility in research and implementation” . #BDS #MedicallyUnexplainedSymptoms #MUS #ICD11 #primarycare

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Diane O'Leary, PhD

@DianeOLeary

2 years

@PPEtoheros @LauraMiers @AbraarKaran @WalkerBragman @danaparish @DrEricDing @dianaberrent @jljcolorado @yaneerbaryam @emilyakopp @UniversalMaski2 @luckytran @RickABright @dgurdasani1 The CDC is silent because they think many long covid symptoms are psychosomatic, and research says that if you legitimize psychosomatic symptoms you make them worse. Is it ethical for CDC to withhold vital health information from the public “for their own good”? Absolutely not.

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