Medically Unexplained Symptoms

Posted , 3 users are following.

There is a professional article on this web site about medically unexplained symptoms which happens when a patient does not get a diagnosis.

The gist of the article is to direct patients towards counselling and suggests the patient may have a mental health problem. The article does not mention alternate possibilities such as poor medical investigations and technical limitations.

I think the article should be reviewed because it is unbalanced. 

The article fails to recognise the frustration caused by lack of a diagnosis - and it is especially true in a situation where it ought to be possible. 

https://patient.info/doctor/medically-unexplained-symptoms-assessment-and-management

 

1 like, 2 replies

2 Replies

  • Posted

    Hi Aging Cockney Viking

    I completely agree with you about this MUS article. The history of Fibromyalgia springs to mind and the years of pain suffers endured plus psychological harm caused by clinicains saying 'it's a psychiatric problem'.

    Fact is and I run the risk of being removed from this site for saying it MUS or it's new name Bodily Distress Disorder happens almost exclusively in patients who have a history of being prescribed psychiatric medications.

    It's also a coincidence that people who have been forced to take psychiatric medications die 10-20 years prematurely.

    Another coincidence is the anger to an almost hatred level that's displayed when anyone with even a hint of past psychiatric history recieves when they mention the words itagenic and harm in the same sentence.

    So many coincidences. It may interest you to know that Functional Neurological Disorder (FND)should only ever be diagnosed with a postive test result. There's another coincidence coming which is the rise in rare diseases which are very hard to diagnose as don't usually show up on the standard tests that are done on people.

    However we wouldn't want to subject patients to any invasive tests would we.

    Peace love and light

    Ellie

    • Posted

      From what I can see the article is seriously unbalanced and I cannot see why the site publishes it.

      What is more worrying is one of my GP's with an interest in mental health is suggesting I should take counselling over an undiagnosed back /UTI problem. It looks like cauda equina slow onset which is supposed to be diagnosed quickly.

      What is becoming clear to me is that MRIs are not very reliable and nor are the people commissioning them. It turns out there are at least 3 different kinds of MRI each with a different limitation which means you a patient may have to all three. So rather than a GP getting all three done, why not suggest counselling instead?     It is far cheaper....

      and it saves the GP from having to think about which type of MRI is best suited to identifying the cause of a problem .... 

      and to get an EMG to check if there was a problem which an MRI did not identify.

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