4:26pm September 28, 2014

➸ Reblog if you think that Fibromyalgia is real

clatterbane:

squidsqueen:

wastelandmae:

thisisableism:

loki-zen:

spoonie-mj:

the-jacobguy:

spoonie-mj:

A lot of people have told me that Fibromyalgia isn’t real. I’ve been told that I imagine the pain and exhaustion and that I do it for attention….

I definitely agree that it’s real. You don’t get the same pattern of symptoms over and over in different people if it’s not a real phenomenon that causes that pattern of physical symptoms in multiple people.

However, as a psychology student I really want to respond to the statement, “They don’t believe it’s real; they just give me antidepressants or tell me to exercise.” The not-believing-it’s-real part is a problem, but real conditions causing pain and fatigue actually are treated with both of those things. Antidepressants have been used to help people in stressful situations—for example, tested in women with breast cancer, people who are obviously in a tough situation—and were found to be beneficial. Someone dealing with fibromyalgia might feel better when taking antidepressants for the same reason that the breast cancer patients did, because it helped them cope with a difficult experience that involved pain and physical illness. I’m not sure about exercise, about whether it’s beneficial for fibromyalgia directly, but I do know that exercise, if not overdone and engaged in only when you actually have the energy for it, is of general benefit. People with physical disabilities often have trouble accessing exercise, and even adapted recreation tends to focus on more “obvious” physical disabilities rather than on people with fatigue, endurance, and pain issues.

The point, I suppose, is that just because something is a real, physical condition, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have mental/emotional side effects, and that just because something is a treatment for a mental/emotional condition, doesn’t mean it’s not beneficial for physical ones.

Yeah and amitriptyline, an antidepressant, is known to actually treat some kinds of pain in some people. Not because the pain is psychosomatic, but because that particular drug somehow treats pain. Just like Lyrica treats neuropathic pain even though neuropathic pain isn’t caused by seizures.

I think the problem comes in when things like antidepressants and exercise are treated as the first line of treatment specifically because the doctor believes the problem to be wholly, or mostly, psychiatric in nature or caused by lack of exercise. There’s a huge, ongoing problem for people with chronic fatigue syndrome where they are prescribed a ‘graded exercise’ program that makes a lot of people far worse (because CFS involves exercise intolerance), and basically amounts to punishing people for having stamina problems.

If fibromyalgia and CFS were truly seen as physical diseases on the same level that other physical diseases are, then the treatments given would be first aimed to treat the physical symptoms, and only then aimed to treat the psychological symptoms and lifestyle problems that may be causing problems. (And only then if the psychological and lifestyle problems exist in the first place, and aren’t just being assumed to exist because FMS and CFS are considered quasi-psychiatric by a lot of doctors.)

Like… I have a lot of physical diseases, and nobody has tried to give me antidepressants for them, except in cases where they thought amitriptyline might help with something specific and physical like pain or sleep. I do have medication for anxiety, which I am very glad for right now as I’m dealing with my parents’ severe illnesses and my father’s impending death. And I also need anxiety meds any time I’m in the hospital or I have nonstop panic attacks starting sometime around my second day there. But if someone tried to tell me that my very much physical condition was caused by anxiety and this is why they were prescribing them, I’d get insulted pretty fast. (Oh yeah and my anxiety meds also happen to treat seizures and nausea. Not because they treat anxiety, but because they just also happen to treat those things. Nausea is one of my main reasons for using lorazepam.)

And it’s not that psychiatric conditions are less real. It’s that treating physical conditions as psychiatric is outright dangerous, it results in people dying. Of course I’m sure you know everything I’m saying here, I’m just adding it on for the benefit of anyone who doesn’t.

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