Me, reading this whilst an in patient at an NHS FND specialist centre, where around 40% of the activities for helping us manage and understand our disability has involved mindfulness... 👀
Think that I need to do some digging and some more reading.
Yikes AJ, sorry to hear that. Though not surprised. Mindfulness has permeated and polluted almost every single environment: schools, workplaces, therapy clinics, and hospitals, despite not having a single study that shows it to be better than any other activity someone may do for relaxation or recreation.
As someone there on the spot, do you have any thoughts on what kind of things would feel more beneficial from your perspective?
Difficult to know as knowledge about FND is so primitive at the moment.
The theory is that FND is almost a malfunction in your fight flight freeze response, causing the symptoms (I'm majorly simplifying it here). And Mindfulness is being used to bring our focus back to our bodies and /or calm our fight flight freeze down, to hopefully calm down some of the symptoms.
I think we need a lot more research into FND to see what can help. Hopefully that is on its way soon.
I see what you mean. Unfortunately there isn't any evidence that mindfulness can be effective in reducing stress levels, or impact on the autonomic nervous system. It sounds like they're throwing everything they can at it in hope of having some effect. With such a dearth of evidence in relation to etiology, it's difficult to have any confidence about a treatment, and for sure more research is needed. It does seem that the passing of time is helpful for some people but not others. Hope you soon have some satisfying improvement.
Hi, I am new to this page but captivated by your eloquence. But when I tried to explain your ideas to my scientifically mindful friends, I was not able to provide with any references. As a newbie to your page I don't know where to find sources of your quotes. Thank you
Hi Mario, Volume I is now up as a freebie for subscribers (click the "Free Downloads" menu item on the home page of the newsletter. There are over 40 high-quality citations there for your reading pleasure.
Are you aware that what's essentially a form of ACT is THE intervention of choice developed by WHO as a short term, scalable group stress management intervention for people struggling with adversity (so for example refuges, victims of natural disasters, people living in conflict zones, etc etc etc)?
It combines mindfulness techniques, relaxation, problem solving and working with values (I'd have a LOT to say about those value based sections but I don't want to come across as too WEIRD biased in my criticisms) and in the intro part of the manual claims research support for the effectiveness. What do you think about this?
I was involved in one of the localisations/language adaptations and thus read (and more) the whole massive package of content associated with it, but tbh not checked the research, working from conclusion that giving people in an objectively stressful and distressing situation 2 hours a week to meet with similar others, sit around doing silly excercies feeling you're helping yourself cope, with a free beverage and possibly a creche, is likely to help most people and boost their feelings of agency anyway, but I never stopped wondering whether there was genuine rationale behind the actual content of the programme.
What do I think? I think we’re on the same page :-) I would have specifically debunked ACT but my friend James Coyne has already done it really well and I’ve asked him to republish. He pointed out the incompetent and even corrupt “studies” that kicked off the whole shebang. A more recent devastating critique is “the efficacy of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: An updated systematic review and meta-analysis”. The WHO isn’t trustworthy on this matter and ACT is far from the only complete BS that it endorses.
For an author "debunking" therapy myths, I would like you to include the sources and a bibliography. It would also be nice to at least look at some of the counter-evidence and its quality, so people can make up their own minds. Often, partly because their audience rewards and expects it, "science busters" fall more and more into bad-faith attacks and rate the evidence in favour of their claim much higher than the evidence against their claim (aka bias). I know we cannot avoid bias, myself included, but we would all benefit from trying to approach hypotheses with an open mind.
ABC, very fair point. I've written extensively on this, including more citations than anyone might care to read, in my papers on ResearchGate which are all open access. This includes counter-evidence and its quality, agreed, very important.
10446 studies "not relevant to key questions" from the 18753 excluded, should we count the 11000 duplicates too then, for an even more impressive 0.001%?
JG, after painfully reviewing so many truly appalling studies, I kind of stopped bothering digging any further. I’ve literally begged various groups for just a single decent positive paper. Crickets.
Hi Mario and welcome. A volume series of mini-books will soon appear here as free downloads for all subscribers and those will be fully referenced. Volume I should go up this week and everyone will receive a notification that it’s ready.
In addition my research paper “A Sad State of Affairs” is available on ResearchGate.
Me, reading this whilst an in patient at an NHS FND specialist centre, where around 40% of the activities for helping us manage and understand our disability has involved mindfulness... 👀
Think that I need to do some digging and some more reading.
Yikes AJ, sorry to hear that. Though not surprised. Mindfulness has permeated and polluted almost every single environment: schools, workplaces, therapy clinics, and hospitals, despite not having a single study that shows it to be better than any other activity someone may do for relaxation or recreation.
As someone there on the spot, do you have any thoughts on what kind of things would feel more beneficial from your perspective?
Difficult to know as knowledge about FND is so primitive at the moment.
The theory is that FND is almost a malfunction in your fight flight freeze response, causing the symptoms (I'm majorly simplifying it here). And Mindfulness is being used to bring our focus back to our bodies and /or calm our fight flight freeze down, to hopefully calm down some of the symptoms.
I think we need a lot more research into FND to see what can help. Hopefully that is on its way soon.
I see what you mean. Unfortunately there isn't any evidence that mindfulness can be effective in reducing stress levels, or impact on the autonomic nervous system. It sounds like they're throwing everything they can at it in hope of having some effect. With such a dearth of evidence in relation to etiology, it's difficult to have any confidence about a treatment, and for sure more research is needed. It does seem that the passing of time is helpful for some people but not others. Hope you soon have some satisfying improvement.
Hi, I am new to this page but captivated by your eloquence. But when I tried to explain your ideas to my scientifically mindful friends, I was not able to provide with any references. As a newbie to your page I don't know where to find sources of your quotes. Thank you
Hi Mario, Volume I is now up as a freebie for subscribers (click the "Free Downloads" menu item on the home page of the newsletter. There are over 40 high-quality citations there for your reading pleasure.
Thank you so much
Are you aware that what's essentially a form of ACT is THE intervention of choice developed by WHO as a short term, scalable group stress management intervention for people struggling with adversity (so for example refuges, victims of natural disasters, people living in conflict zones, etc etc etc)?
See: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240035119
It combines mindfulness techniques, relaxation, problem solving and working with values (I'd have a LOT to say about those value based sections but I don't want to come across as too WEIRD biased in my criticisms) and in the intro part of the manual claims research support for the effectiveness. What do you think about this?
I was involved in one of the localisations/language adaptations and thus read (and more) the whole massive package of content associated with it, but tbh not checked the research, working from conclusion that giving people in an objectively stressful and distressing situation 2 hours a week to meet with similar others, sit around doing silly excercies feeling you're helping yourself cope, with a free beverage and possibly a creche, is likely to help most people and boost their feelings of agency anyway, but I never stopped wondering whether there was genuine rationale behind the actual content of the programme.
What do I think? I think we’re on the same page :-) I would have specifically debunked ACT but my friend James Coyne has already done it really well and I’ve asked him to republish. He pointed out the incompetent and even corrupt “studies” that kicked off the whole shebang. A more recent devastating critique is “the efficacy of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: An updated systematic review and meta-analysis”. The WHO isn’t trustworthy on this matter and ACT is far from the only complete BS that it endorses.
For an author "debunking" therapy myths, I would like you to include the sources and a bibliography. It would also be nice to at least look at some of the counter-evidence and its quality, so people can make up their own minds. Often, partly because their audience rewards and expects it, "science busters" fall more and more into bad-faith attacks and rate the evidence in favour of their claim much higher than the evidence against their claim (aka bias). I know we cannot avoid bias, myself included, but we would all benefit from trying to approach hypotheses with an open mind.
ABC, very fair point. I've written extensively on this, including more citations than anyone might care to read, in my papers on ResearchGate which are all open access. This includes counter-evidence and its quality, agreed, very important.
10446 studies "not relevant to key questions" from the 18753 excluded, should we count the 11000 duplicates too then, for an even more impressive 0.001%?
JG, after painfully reviewing so many truly appalling studies, I kind of stopped bothering digging any further. I’ve literally begged various groups for just a single decent positive paper. Crickets.
Hi Mario and welcome. A volume series of mini-books will soon appear here as free downloads for all subscribers and those will be fully referenced. Volume I should go up this week and everyone will receive a notification that it’s ready.
In addition my research paper “A Sad State of Affairs” is available on ResearchGate.
Happy reading :-)
.