Ellen Goudsmit

Dr Ellen Marianne Goudsmit is a retired health psychologist. Despite being disabled since childhood and at times, housebound, she has worked to create greater awareness of conditions such as postnatal depression, premenstrual syndrome, myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). She has been an advisor to the charity now known as Action for ME, and to the ME Association.

Dr Goudsmit has written papers detailing her accusations that the British Medical Journal and The Lancet journal had displayed bias in favor of the psychological model of ME and CFS.

Her published several papers on ME and CFS include the first description of progressive ME, "Progressive Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) or a New Disease? A Case Report." She has also been very critical of psychologizing: the attempts to treat ME/CFS as symptoms without any physical cause, for example by assuming symptoms are the result of a misinterpretation of "normal functioning".

London criteria
Dr. Goudsmit was one of the co-authors of the London criteria for ME, along with Dr. Elizabeth Dowsett, Dr. Anne Macintyre, and Dr. Charles Shepherd. These were published by Action for ME (then ME Action) for use by researchers funded by the charity. An incomplete, edited copy by an unknown person was later published in the 1994 Westcare report and has frequently been assumed to be the original, for example, in articles on the PACE trial. To avoid confusion, these are now referred to as the 'Westcare criteria'. The first version of the revised London criteria was published in Health Psychology Update, 2009. The text (with additional references) is available on the ME Association website. "A copy of the ‘London Criteria for M.E.’ as revised in 2014 archived here for reference purposes."

Letters

 * 2000, Rapid Response - Functional somatic syndromes
 * 2001, Measuring the Quality of Trials of Treatments for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
 * 2002, (Letter) - responding to an editorial by Stanley et al.
 * 2004, (Rapid Response) - Please believe psychiatrists with CFS
 * 2015, Response to article in the magazine published by the UK charity MCS-Aware

Doctorate thesis

 * 1996 - [[Media:Goudsmit Thesis.pdf | The Psychological Aspects and Management of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome]]

Notable publications

 * 1991, All in the mind? The Psychologisation of Illness - published in the Bulletin of the British Psychological Society


 * 1993, All in her mind! Stereotypic views and the Psychologization of women's illness (Full text)


 * 2004, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Editorial Bias in the British Medical Journal (Abstract)
 * 2009, Learning to cope with chronic illness. Efficacy of a multi-component treatment for people with chronic fatigue syndrome (Abstract)
 * 2009, Illness intrusiveness in myalgic encephalomyelitis: an exploratory study (Abstract)
 * 2012, Pacing as a strategy to improve energy management in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome: a consensus document (Abstract)
 * 2014, London Criteria for M.E., revised in 2014 (Full Text)
 * 2015, Progressive Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) or A New Disease? A Case Report (Full Text)
 * 2017, A Comparison of Case Definitions for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (Full Text)
 * 2017, Bias, misleading information and lack of respect for alternative views have distorted perceptions of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome and its treatment (Full Text)

Learn more

 * PACE Trial the Flaws - PDF

Online presence

 * PubMed - Ellen Goudsmit
 * Twitter
 * Ellen Goudsmit blog- "A diary about trying to cope with life as a severely disabled scientist"
 * Ellen Goudsmit CV
 * ME List