Trudie Chalder

Trudie Chalder, R.M.N., M.Sc., is a Professor of Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapy at the Institute of Psychiatry in King's College London. Professor Chalder was an investigator on the PACE trial. She has also done consultancy work for insurance companies and has received royalties from Sheldon Press and Constable and Robinson.

Recovery claims

In a 2011 article in the Guardian UK newspaper professor Chalder was quoted as saying "twice as many people on graded exercise therapy and cognitive behaviour therapy got back to normal" which is not supported by the PACE trial results.

Controversy

In 2000 Chalder & fellow researchers were accused of "unsupported conclusions derived from faulty analyses", and responded that "we've been attacked by gremlins" who changed the data on their manuscript.

Notable studies

• 2017, The presence of co-morbid mental health problems in a cohort of adolescents with chronic fatigue syndrome
• 2017, Response to: "Do more people recover from chronic fatigue syndrome with cognitive behaviour therapy or graded exercise therapy than with other treatments?"

  "ABSTRACT - Background: Wilshire et al. suggest that we have overestimated the number of patients that recover from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) after receiving a course of either cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) or graded exercise therapy (GET), as reported in a secondary analysis of outcome data from the Pacing, graded Activity and Cognitive behavior therapy; a randomized Evaluation (PACE) trial. We provide counter-arguments to this view. Purpose: To provide an alternative view to that offered by Wilshire et al. Methods: We review the two different analyses of PACE trial outcome data to estimate recovery, and compare these to other published trials and cohort studies. Results: While there is no gold standard for recovery from CFS, previous trials and cohort studies provide support for our analysis of recovery in the PACE trial. Our finding that 22% of participants recover from the current episode of CFS after either CBT or GET, compared to 8% after adaptive pacing therapy and 7% after specialist medical care alone, is consistent with the literature. Conclusions: Our original conclusions that '… recovery from CFS is possible, and that CBT and GET are the therapies most likely to lead to recovery’ is an important, reasonable, and hopeful message for both clinicians and patients."

• 2016, An attention and interpretation bias for illness-specific information in chronic fatigue syndrome
• 2016, Cognitive behaviour therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome: Differences in treatment outcome between a tertiary treatment centre in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands
• 2016, Complementary and alternative healthcare use by participants in the PACE trial of treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome
• 2016, Mortality of people with chronic fatigue syndrome: a retrospective cohort study in England and Wales from the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust Biomedical Research Centre (SLaM BRC) Clinical Record Interactive Search (CRIS) Register
  • The study has been criticized by James Coyne.
• 2012, Experiences of young people who have undergone the Lightning Process to treat chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis
• 1997, Chronic fatigue syndrome. A practical guide to assessment and management

Books

• Overcoming Chronic Fatigue

Talks and interviews

• 2016, Slide from talk claiming "It is possible to recover from CFS"
• 2011, Trudie Chalder interview (YouTube)
• Trudie Chalder interview, undated (YouTube)

Directorships and shareholdings

Trudie Chaldler was an officer of OneHealth (Company number 04364122) from 2002 to 15 June 2010. Peter Denton White was also an officer of Onehealth. Onehealth was dissolved on 15 June 2010. The memorandum of association stated that the purpose is to promote the biopsychosocial model of illness.

Trudie Chaldler was a director of British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP) Company number 04839948 from 2011 until she resigned on 23 July 2015.

Trudie Chalder has been a director of WESTSIDE PROPERTY (MANAGEMENT) LIMITED (Company number 02067823) since April 2013.

None of these have been disclosed in her research work and publications.

Source of amendment info: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/04364122 https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/04839948/officers https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/officers/tT80tPHUBVJeHaOW03QrbfZGfG8/appointments

Learn more

• Wikipedia - Trudie Chalder
• 2013, Wiley - Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Part Two. Specific Disorders

See also

• Chalder fatigue scale
• PACE trial
• Simon Wessely
• Michael Sharpe
• Peter White
• Esther Crawley

cognition Thought processes, including attention, reasoning, and memory.

cognition Thought processes, including attention, reasoning, and memory.

cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) - A type of psychotherapy geared toward modifying alleged unhealthy thinking, behaviors or illness beliefs. One of the treatment arms used in the controversial PACE trial.

graded exercise therapy (GET) - A gradual increase in exercise or activity, according to a pre-defined plan. Focuses on overcoming the patient's alleged unhelpful illness beliefs that exertion can exacerbate symptoms, rather than on reversing physical deconditioning. Considered controversial, and possibly harmful, in the treatment or management of ME. One of the treatment arms of the controversial PACE trial.

pacing The practice of staying within one's "energy envelope" or personal limit by combining periods of activity with periods of rest or avoiding exerting beyond a certain level. ME/CFS patients use pacing to avoid or reduce post-exertional malaise (PEM). Some patients use a heart rate monitor to help with pacing.

PACE trial A controversial study which claimed that CBT and GET were effective in treating "CFS/ME", despite the fact that its own data did not support this conclusion. Its results and methodology were widely disputed by patients, scientists, and the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

biopsychosocial model (BPS) - A school of thought, usually based in psychology, which claims illness and disease to be the result of the intermingling of biological, psychological and social causes. (Learn more: me-pedia.org)

bias Bias in research is "a systematic deviation of an observation from the true clinical state". (Learn more: me-pedia.org)

somatic symptom disorder A psychiatric term to describe an alleged condition whereby a person's thoughts somehow cause physical symptoms. The actual existence of such a condition is highly controversial, due to a lack of scientific evidence. It is related to other psychiatric terms, such as "psychosomatic", "neurasthenia", and "hysteria". Older terms include "somatization", "somatoform disorder", and "conversion disorder". Such terms refer to a scientifically-unsupported theory that claims that a wide range of physical symptoms can be created by the human mind, a theory which has been criticized as "mind over matter" parapsychology, a pseudoscience.