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astopford
Reviews
Afflicted (2018)
A dangerous muddle that confuses physical and psychosomatic illness
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.