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Panorama: The Trauma Industry was broadcast on BBC One at 8.30pm on Monday, 27 July 2009.
An excellent programme. A great deal better than the only weakly critical one on the Health and Safety industry. Without a Lord Denning to knock some sense into the surreal world that passes for 'normality' in the UK today we need more journalism of this quality to highlight the nonsensical approach of the Courts to personal injury claim.
- Peter Williams
The Panorama programmed on PTSD trauma last night mentioned in passing that fibromyalgia was glibly used as a way of getting benefits and cannot be proved and only is confirmed by patient. This isn't true, sufferers have to see a list of consultants for confirmation they have the condition, and testing is rigorous. For sufferers that have this chronic and debilitating illness it was mentioned in a way to make it sound like it was all in their mind. This is not correct. It is a real illness. I feel the reporter did a great injustice to sufferers by this comment. This illness comes with problems getting the medical profession to even knowledge it existed as much as PTSD did in the past. People suffer on their own with this condition undiagnosed for decades sometimes, still working, in terrible pain. It is a terrible thing to live with, his comments were unenlightening and experts should be brought in for both sides to be talked about when any medical condition is mentioned in an authoritative programme of this nature. I thought it was a badly researched documentary.
- Ms Ward
I have just been watching your programme on PTSD, which is regarded as a psychological illness. While accepting the point that many people are fraudulently exploiting this diagnosis, there is another major point that is being missed. That is that severe and prolonged stress can make you very ill: but the illness is physical and not psychological. It comes about from an excessive use of the adrenal glands and is called General Adaption Syndrome or Adrenal Fatigue. Based of the work of Dr Hans Selye the view is that it develops through three stages. Stage one is the normal "fight or flight" reaction; stage 2 is the period of prolonged stress where the adrenal glands are overworked and the patient experiences a prolonged "high" and can feel the he can do anything. But it can't go on and stage 3 is the complete exhaustion and the nervous system is on a hair trigger. General Adaption Syndrome is not part of the medical mainstream but there are a lot of doctors who believe that it exists and is being missed and that it may be the underlying cause of ME. To the extent that it is part of the mainstream, it is coming through the relatively new specialities of psychoneuroendocrinology and psychoneuroimmunology which recognise the relationships between the mind, brain and physical body and that stress damages both the endocrine and immune systems.
- Bill Scott
Having watched this week's Panorama, overall I think it was a high quality, thoughtful look at PTSD as used in cases of legal compensation. However, there is one thing that deeply concerned me about it, and that was the repeated distinction between PTSD from minor traumas and combat-related PTSD. To me this gives the impression that the programme was asserting that only war-related trauma was a serious enough trauma to cause this psychiatric condition. This completely ignores other traumas such as domestic violence, sexual abuse, rape. And I am hoping that the programme makers were not intending to imply that these non-combat related traumas are "minor".
- Jennifer Ware, Scotland
I would just like to point out a logical flaw made by the reporter covering the PTSD trauma industry. The reporter said that he ticked all the boxes for PTSD, so he must "have it". But that doesn't follow. He could tick all the boxes but that doesn't confirm that he has a disorder. There is evidence to show that PTSD is a healing response and not a disorder at all.
- John Jones