Journal of IiME Volume 3 Issue 1 www.investinme.org Call to Action - Why I Support Invest in ME (continued) authorities with their ‘concerns’. This practise is encouraged by psychiatrists who use peoples ‘concerns’ to back up their mental health treatment assault. By supporting Invest in ME you are supporting human rights. Sophia was stripped of her human rights because of the mental health label. By supporting and bringing to light the truth about the disease of M.E you are helping to save lives. You are helping prevent another Sophia story happening. By supporting Invest in ME you are saying that M.E is a physical disease that needs to be treated as such. This matters to those countless M.E sufferers and their carers that you understand they are genuinely physically ill. There is no physical diagnostic test for ME at the moment but how can there be a physical marker test for ME if no research money is put there? This must change. I will be going back to my old nursing school and giving a talk about Sophia and her ME on June 8th. Ignorance of ME is producing much unnecessary suffering. We need as much help as possible to turn the image of M.E around. Racism is rightly taken very seriously, but what about ’diseasism’ ? There is a stigma with M.E that is similar to a sixteenth century witch hunt. The accusation of being called mentally ill, is similar to that of calling a woman a witch. Treating someone as if they are mentally ill, does not make that person mentally ill. How can someone prove they are physically ill if the doctors treating them do not believe their own eyes and ears? Even without a diagnostic test for M.E there are still physical abnormalities that would show up in a blood test and other basic health checks. Many doctors are reluctant to physically test for ME because the “experts’ ” advice that it ‘encourages aberrant illness beliefs’. ME is not a belief, it is a fact. Invest in ME (Charity Nr. 1114035) Page 37/76 ME is as much a ’belief’ as I ’believe’ in gravity and those psychiatrists ’believe’ they are medically trained. We need research into the physical nature of M.E. We need people to be as aware of M.E as they are of cancer. You wouldn’t accuse a cancer patient of imagining their illness because they had unresolved issues. Not many things in life are black and white, but this is. There is no ‘confusion /controversy’ about the disease of ME except the confusion the 'expert' psychiatrists have put there. By muddying the waters , these psychiatrists, many of whom are in the pockets of medical insurance companies, are keeping M.E in their domain. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and M.E are being lumped together as the same disease but they are not the same. M.E. is a physical neurological disease, and CFS is am umbrella term for any disease with fatigue in. Chronic Fatigue is classified by W.H.O as a mental health illness, but M.E is classified as a physical, neurological disease. One can see how the lack of clarity starts to happen. A small powerful band of psychiatrists have, for years, clouded and complicated the understanding of the disease of M.E, not just in the consciousness of ordinary people, but in the minds of doctors, psychiatrists and the Government, by talking about ME and fatiguing syndromes in the same breath. People are still suffering unnecessarily from the physical disease of ME and from the unspoken accusation that it is 'all in their mind' because of a small group of doctors’ greed for money and position. People are living under fear of being sectioned because they ’believe’ they are physically ill with M.E. Carers of those with ME have a much higher rate of being accused of Munchhausen’s By Proxy .
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