On 8/3/2011 3:21 AM, Mandi Smallhorne wrote:

I don’t think it’s a conspiracy accusation – it’s an expression of the 
rage and frustration felt by CFS patients who long for an answer. 
They;’ve had one dangled before their eyes and then snatched away. I 
think it’s possible that the problems have not been well communicated to 
the lay people in the trenches fighting this disease. Anyone who has had 
this condition or known someone who has will be very tolerant of their 
anger – nothing worse than feeling that a very real and utterly 
debilitating condition is being dismissed constantly as ‘in your head’ etc.

=====

Yes. And such a response is two-edged. On the one hand it dismisses 
physical symptoms and real pain as non-existent if the 'cause' is 
psychological. On the other hand it is an implicit dismissal of the pain 
of mental illness. (And a by-product, it puts CFS patients in the 
position of implicitly 'joining' that dismissal of the pain of mental 
illness.

Regardless of what causes CFS, the pain (as I said above) is real, and 
to dismiss it as mental is stupid and callous EVEN IF THAT IS CORRECT. 
Pain is pain from whatever source, and mental conditions are real.

Carrol

P.S. I have not read other posts in the thread.