Will this be the next excuse to blow us off?

[buddy99]

It sounds like finally they have found the cause for those hypo patients who complain about their treatment and also tend to be non compliant. Are we maybe all Type D personalities?

academic.oup.com/jcem/advan...

[Judithdalston]

just what we need… wretched academic confirmation that mental weakness/ hysteria accounts for all our hypothyroid problems. Over 20 years ago one of the authors of this paper insisted I was ‘mended’ with 150 mcg levothyroxine, despite my bloods showing FT3 under range, and me really struggling with my teaching job, so I presume they are back to ‘your TSH is normal so you must be euthyroid, or a feeble type 4 personality’. Good job they don’t shoot us for being such a strain on society!

[Regenallotment Ambassador]

Shame they missed out the ‘lifetime poor patient care, gaslighting from infancy through adulthood’ as a possible (causal?) link to type D personality traits from the limitations section.

Although it’s good to see they recognise the grumpy tend to fill in more questionnaires.

Anyone else a bit Jekyl and Hyde depending on FT4/FT3 and other hormonal balances ? 🌱

[Judithdalston]

Back again, having delved further into this paper ( and not too far as is was making me cross!)…so many questions and variables, but noticed that those who answered questionnaires were asked if in the last 4 weeks they had felt anxiety/low mood/ depression and whether this ‘bothered a little’ or ‘a lot’, or ‘not bothered at all’, which even those who had honestly answered they were bothered a bit by a low mood were classified as being ‘anxious/depressed’! So a perfectly healthy person who was capable of realising that 5 minutes of feeling a bit down was categorised as having ‘depression’…stupid!

[Sparklingsunshine in reply to Judithdalston]

Ask any cross section of people if they've felt a bit anxious, stressed or down in the last 4 weeks and I'm pretty sure a lot would reply a resounding "yes". We live in stressful times.

And anyone dealing with a chronic condition, often poorly treated by the NHS is allowed to feel hacked off in my view. Not just Hypos.

[Judithdalston in reply to Sparklingsunshine]

Yes, I nearly wrote exactly this….everyone seems to have ‘mental health’ nowadays implying it’s poor rather than ok to good, especially if you are younger!

[buddy99 in reply to Sparklingsunshine]

It is, in my opinion, an excellent example of how research can be manipulated to have the "right" outcome. From what I understand, the pharma industry does it all the time (and better). But this is such a glaring case of manipulation that even a layperson (yes, I don't have an MD behind my name, so I'm an unqualified layperson) can figure it out. But I fear that these are the things that stick and fully anticipate to hear this in practice within the next couple of years. Then, when you are hypo, not only will you be handed an antidepressant, there will be another reason to not take you serious. 😿

[Sparklingsunshine]

I cant help wondering if they would reach the same conclusions about a condition that mainly affected men. It seems the old depression/ anxiety/ hypochondria misogyny raises its very ugly head and I'm sure its because thyroid disorders primarily, not exclusively, affect women.

[Staffsgirl]

Words fail me. I’m livid.

[Wheat]

Hello buddy 99, No, I m a type A. However, you can prove anything you want with statistics. So maybe according to them im a type D.

Ignorant arrogant so and so's. Reminds me of the witch hunt with M. E. disease being described as all in the mind etc. Went on for years . Maybe its about money too.

My apologies for being uncharacteristically ungenerous towards these 'academics'.

[inthedoldrums]

How disheartening! However, I have my own theory on this. I think that our hormones and different balances of hormones affect our personalities and make us who we are with such diversity of personality types. Therefore, if our thyroid hormones are badly out of kilter then we may well sink into a "type D" personality. It turns their theory on its head and makes under medication the culprit, not a supposed personality disorder causing the medication not to work properly. A very flawed study, in my opinion.

[greygoose in reply to inthedoldrums]

Totally agree with you!

[buddy99 in reply to inthedoldrums]

Another game of "Blame The Patient".

[tattybogle]

several earlier responses to this garbage here :

healthunlocked.com/thyroidu... new-research-link-between-type-d-personality-and-hypothyroidism-discovered.-thoughts

[greygoose]

Oh, these damned psychologists! I wish they'd keep their opinions to themselves!

[Judithdalston]

I wonder what the nearly 10% of returned but unacceptable/ rejected questionnaires actually said, hopefully something akin to ‘are you researchers mad?’

[buddy99]

What worries me the most is, that the condensed version was published in the Endocrinology Advisor. Any Endo reading this, is going to jump for joy. Even less time to be wasted on unhappy patients. "We knew they were coocoo before, now we can call them Type D." Work done!

[Zephyrbear]

The fact they used E-MPATHY as a name for their “research” tells me all I need to know about those who came up with it… I met a lot of them when I was at school in the 60s - pubescent boys thinking up clever little acronyms for their, usually, small-minded projects. There’s no empathy in this load of b*llocks at all! It’s designed, purely, to give them an excuse to continue treating us the exact contemptuous way they always have by putting us all in some convenient, negative “personality” type!

And when are these idiots going to stop treating us as a bunch of blood tests??? Oh, this person’s TSH is in range so they must be euthyroid, anything else is an anomaly…

Perhaps some people don’t socialise because they just don’t like other people and avoid interaction with them as much as possible? I hate being in a crowd but it’s certainly not because I fear being judged negatively… I couldn’t give a flying monkey’s what people’s opinions of me are!

God knows what they would make of my thyroid status - TSH undetectable; FT4 way below range; FT3 around the top of the range. According to them I should probably be either restrained in a mental institution or 6ft under! And yet… here I am, perfectly fine and functioning well!

Makes me wonder how the answers from those 392 “non-viable” responses might have skewed their “results”…

[helvella Administrator in reply to Zephyrbear]

I absolutely detest clever acronyms, and project "code" names that do not obscure. I mean, project code names were used to neutralise and remove any possible meaning, to avoid leaking. Not to announce like a film title!

There are some (relatively) great acronyms. Like NHANES (The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey). Went from what was very clearly just an acronym, to become almost a word. Not come up with a word (or near-word) and pummel everything to produce that using every from of verbal and psychological manipulation to beat it into submission and make everyone think good of whatever is being named.

[Sparklingsunshine in reply to Zephyrbear]

I've always been an introvert, since I was a child, long before I became hypo. I get overwhelmed with crowds, noise, smells. My sensitive biology sucks but there it is. I like one to one or a couple of people over but hate big gatherings. I might be a misanthrope but I a'int depressed lol.

[buddy99 in reply to Sparklingsunshine]

Same here. Crowds, even well meaning, happy or congratulatory ones completely drain me after 30 minutes max. And then I'm tired but not depressed.

[Topsy33]

in my view, as a now retired academic researcher, The whole Type D personality thing is a social construct. In that it does not exist in nature. It resides in the minds of those who like to employ fabricated models to negatively label certain groups in society….in this case Thyroid patients. Just ignore it and show it the contempt it deserves.

[Tina_Maria]

So according to this, when we are unsatisfied with the treatment we receive, some of us 'magically' develop the Type D personality that makes us anxious, depressed and develop somatic symptoms?! But funny enough, once we are treated correctly and get to the right replacement levels (and not according to stupid guidelines), the majority of these symptoms disappear. Go figure.

A proper scientific experiment would compare a sample of patients that are dissatisfied with their treatment with another sample of patients that experienced those symptoms, but have received adequate thyroid replacement. I would be interested in seeing how many patients would still exhibit the Type D personality? I'd say it would be NOT statistically significant.

There is a lot of bad science out there. And this is a blatant example of conducting a study, where you already know from the outset how to prove your hypothesis.

[humanbean]

There are a lot of things I dislike about this paper.

1) I have never seen or heard of any proof that surveys can prove any theory at all.

2) The people who filled in the survey were self-selecting and were probably the people who were angry enough about their thyroid treatment to want to spend their time filling in a pointless survey.

3) I didn't know what a Type D personality was so for those people who also didn't know here is a description :

healthline.com/health/type-...

That link refers to :

people with a type D personality experience a high degree of emotional distress while suppressing their feelings at the same time.

Personally, I think someone who is poorly treated for a medical condition of any kind is justified in feeling distressed. And we are expected to suppress our feelings in our dealings with doctors. If we started ranting and shouting about how we really felt (and we had the energy to do any ranting or shouting) we'd find ourselves removed from the doctor's list of patients pronto.

4) If a patient has a medical condition which has been late in being diagnosed, and has been treated poorly, the patient is entitled to feel distressed. It isn't a sign of a mental health problem. It's a sign they've seen a poor doctor and are having to live with the consequences of poor treatment or lack of treatment 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

[Sparklingsunshine in reply to humanbean]

Well said HB, in my own family I have various family members struggling with various health conditions, off the top of my head, chronic back pain, chronic migraines, type 2 diabetes, psoriasis, GERD and hiatus hernia, multiple allergies.

All have expressed feeling down, anxious, depressed about their health. All have expressed frustration with treatment options ( or lack of), unsympathetic or useless doctors. I have yet to meet anyone with an ongoing chronic health problem who is happy about it and is chuffed to bits that they need lifelong medication.

Unless you have Munchausen's then why would you? I much preferred my life when I took very few medications, didnt need regular blood tests, felt well and avoided doctors like the plague. I'm sure I'm not alone.

[buddy99 in reply to humanbean]

Humanbean, I would give you 5 hearts for that if I could. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ Here they are.

[Charlie-Farley]

Hi All, Hi Buddy (sorry not about at mo ‘stuff’ to deal with).

This paper is, at a cursory glance, not a rigorous study and does not qualify as science. It merely reinforces my view that medical misogyny is alive and kicking and building on passed failings and tropes.. ..

They seem to have completely missed the fact that they have not actually looked at the people themselves, their physical condition, their nutritional status, thyroid hormone status, medical history, co-morbidities and have instead produced an overly simple opinion poll.

The fact this has been published further shows the deterioration of critical thinking and scientific methodology within what we could laughingly call the medical profession.

Question is does the type of person come about as a result of their situation or their situation come about as a result of their type.

When I was hypo, I was incredibly down feeling weak, unable to do simple tasks and very depressed because I couldn’t!

It is a disgrace that this sort of tat has been published.

[Sparklingsunshine in reply to Charlie-Farley]

Good to see you CF, havent seen you around much lately, hope all is well with you?

[Topsy33 in reply to Charlie-Farley]

Exactly CF and very well put!

Hope all is ok with you. I imagine several people must have missed your posts of late. I certainly have.

[arTistapple]

Sorry but I just read the first name associated with this rubbish. Petros Perros.

I make it my business never to sully my thinking by reading anything now, which that man contributes to. His ‘research’ is waste paper in my view.

This (basically) misogyny is a common theme of his. He is one of a well recognised (by patients) misogynistic group of endocrinologists. We have the best school of anti patient endocrinologists right here in the North East. Hence it gets commendations from the Open prescribing lot for absolutely NO T3 prescriptions.

[Sparklingsunshine in reply to arTistapple]

So this paper is just less expensive Andrex and not even as useful 🤭

[arTistapple in reply to Sparklingsunshine]

Absolutely.

[nightingale-56]

Of course, it wouldn't be the fact that 'being a type D' is because of being Hypothyroid, would it?

There is a very sensible (I think) article covering 2 pages in today's Daily Mail about a lot of hormones. Well worth reading. Sorry, can't do links).

[humanbean in reply to nightingale-56]

dailymail.co.uk/health/arti...

The above link requires a subscription to the Daily Mail (which I don't have and don't want).

The article can also be read here :

pressreader.com/uk/daily-ma...

[nightingale-56 in reply to humanbean]

Thanks humanbean .

[tattybogle]

I think we should do a study of the personality types that end up in top endocrinology posts.

We could call it:

A.R.S.E

( Is ARrogance embedded in the Structure of the Endocrinology profession ? )

[Sparklingsunshine in reply to tattybogle]

I reckon, in all seriousness that they ought to screen doctors for traits of psychopathy or sociopathy before they are allowed to train. I know a lot of bigshot CEO's score highly on psychopathy profiling. I'm guessing there are doctors that would definitely fit.

[arTistapple in reply to Sparklingsunshine]

I agree screening could be a good idea. I have found in ‘old age’ that having brains is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Lacking empathy is an important aspect of easy success. Better to be without it, if you want power and a fat salary. Much easier to trample over everybody and anybody, when you just can’t care about anyone but yourself.

Where can we find someone, any one in the profession capable of doing the screening. So many of similar ilk.

[Sparklingsunshine in reply to arTistapple]

I find professions where you exercise power over potentially vulnerable people, whether its children, the elderly, the sick/ disabled have more than their fair share of undesirables. I think teachers and police should be screened as well. I had an absolutely sadistic teacher when I was about 9 or 10. You could tell she hated kids.

[buddy99 in reply to tattybogle]

Brilliant! And the synonym doesn't give anything away either. HAHAHA!

[arTistapple in reply to tattybogle]

Rather like that.