Afflicted

An opportunity missed to help those with ME and educate the idiots who think it's psychosomatic. Do you really think we'd choose a life with "forever flu", unremitting pain and utter exhaustion? There is enough evidence showing mitochondrial disfunction!

This series is about Medically Unexplained Symptoms (MUS), which are exactly what you would expect them to be. Except that label is usually used as an alternative to hysteria, hypochondria, and psychosomatism. Basically it means that someone doesn't think symptoms are bodily, but instead are generated in the mind.

To support this hypothesis, fringe examples are given. The gas-mask wearers, the woman who's primarily sick when her disconnected husband is around, the people who spend absurd amounts of money chasing every bit of false hope dangled under their noses.

The one good think in this movie is that it highlights the shameless quackery and exploitation that sick people are subjected to. Unfortunately, the contrast is offered in the form of several "experts" pontificating on the emotional origin of physical symptoms. The series does nothing to explain that psychosomatic hypotheses are entirely unproven in chronic illness (versus, for example, a temporary increase in heart rate from being frightened), and indeed ultimately untestable and unprovable - ergo unscientific.

Needless to say, they also do not explore that psychosomatic hypothesis have an abysmal track record. Gastric ulcers? Used to be stress before the bacteria was found. Multiple Sclerosis? Hysterical housewives until the MRI was invented and showed brain abnormalities.

This series was especially befuddling because it included ME/CFS, which has already been proven not be psychosomatic. A few denialists still clam it is, but the basis for their beliefs is just as shoddy and marginalized as those who still believe AIDS is caused by a stressful lifestyle, or autism is caused by emotionally distant mothers. There are literally thousands of research papers document abnormalities, especially with the immune system and energy production. There are objective and widely used tests which have been around for decades and provide incontrovertible proof of biomedical dysfunction.

This series could have been good if it focused on the exploitation of the patients, which was both rampant and disgusting. Instead it judged the cause of their symptoms, essentially dismissing their experiences and awareness of their own bodies. In the process, disinformation has been spread to whoever watches this series, and patients with similar diagnoses face an increased threat of negligence and abuse as a result.

The issue I have with this series is that the stories are broadly framed as being psychosomatic even though some of the conditions have a long and established history of being physical. For example, ME has been recognised as a physical neurological illness since the 60s. A lot of viewers seem to be lumping all the conditions together as psychosomatic an example can be found in another review here on IMDB.

I think this is for a number of reasons: The stories are jumbled up randomly rather than one story per episode, Doctors speak in general terms about psychosomatic illnesses rather than about the individual cases, Poor editing, e.g. a clip of Jamison who has Me (Which is a physical illness) is used while a doctor talks about chronic illnesses being caused by the mind then followed by another MD saying statistically most cases are psychiatric. There seems to be disproportionate amount of content from doctors talking about psychosomatic illnesses and not enough scientific content validating conditions, e.g. the history and science of ME.

Documentaries like this need to be handled very carefully and sensitively, there is enough misunderstanding and stigma that surround these illnesses and documentaries like this should be helping educate people rather than perpetuating ignorant and harmful views. It has been deeply upsetting to read all the negative comments questioning the validity of peoples illnesses on Twitter.

This show markets itself as bringing awareness to the struggles of people living with chronic illnesses, but it seems like this series was actually made specifically to undermine the credibility of people who suffer those illnesses. This show is full of people with very real and well documented conditions (like lyme disease and dystonia), and others with scientific evidence of toxic levels of exposure to mold, gas, and other pollutants, and portrays all the conditions as psychosomatic and all the people as delusional, attention seeking, and manipulative.

Yes, psychosomatic illnesses are a thing, and there are awful people in any group, but this show leans heavily on a false equivalence to create this impression. For instance, one person is shown getting a VNG -- a common and well established test for neurological and vestibular conditions -- and places it next to someone reciting random "codes" for energy healing, and someone else being "detoxed" with magnets. The show does this without distinguishing in any way between those tests and treatments with proven efficacy vs. the scammy, woo-woo BS.

It also repeatedly conflates psychological and neurological. Diseases of the brain and nervous system are not the same as mental illness, yet the two ideas are used interchangeably throughout the series.

This show has the potential to do real harm to people suffering from chronic illnesses. Don't waste your time on it.

The ME community has been fighting for years to get the recognition, and funding, that this illness deserves. The programme makers have manipulated the evidence in a way that perpetrates the myths around ME. This is a serious neurological illness, unfortunately this is not shown. Shame on you Netflix, please don't watch.