MAIMES: Medical Abuse in ME Sufferers

As anybody with ME/CFS and their carers will know, many doctors and health care practitioners still treat ME as a psychological disorder, when in fact it has been proven to be physiological. Patients have been dismissed for decades, disbelieved, misunderstood and symptoms ignored.

The current treatment recommended for ME/CFS patients is CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, a type of psychologically based talk therapy) and GET (Graded Exercise Therapy, a controlled exercise program). This came about due to findings that came out of the PACE Trial which has been reviewed recently and found to be based on flawed principles. The whole trial was unscientific and skewed, not at all a sound basis for deciding how to treat ME/CFS.

Nonetheless, the PACE trial has formed the basis for the NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) guidelines which medical practitioners have been using for years as their basis for treating patients with ME/CFS.

The CBT and GET treatments both cause harm to patients. CBT can make some patients believe they’re causing the problem by erroneous thought patterns or not trying hard enough, while GET absolutely makes patients worse if they are forced to push beyond their limits.

The very nature of this illness is the intolerance to physical, mental and emotional exertion, these treatments only stress patients in those areas and do not at all address the underlying causes or physiological abnormalities in the patients’ bodies.

The abuse is not limited to patients, but even the few doctors that might try to help them in ways that have proven to actually improve the patient’s condition!

The General Medical Council (GMC) has even targeted and prosecuted any doctors that try to use unconventional methods that are not in the NICE guidelines, the very guidelines which are based on the flawed PACE Trial.

MAIMES is a campaign to get as many MPs as possible to sign up to demand an inquiry into the continued abuse of ME/CFS patients over the years.