Holger is a Swedish patient with the severe form of ME/CFS. He now faces the possibility of being forced to a psychiatric ward against his will. Please sign and share this petition, which advocates against this. #HelpHolgerNOW https://act.meaction.net/page/25125/petition/1

More about Holger's situation can be found in this video by his brother from earlier this year.

Holger is bedbound, because every expense of energy triggers symptoms, he wears headphones and dark glasses because he is very sensitive to sensory input. Many of us are experiencing this, it’s typical of severe ME. This is how untreated and ignored serious disease looks like.

Exertion intolerance is documented in ME/CFS by CPET testing, fMRI, neurocognitive testing, cerebral perfusion studies, or gene expression after exertion. Anyone thinking Holger is doing this for attention, malingering, or because of childhood trauma, is simply an idiot.

This is not the first time ME/CFS patients were forced to hospitals to „cure“ them. In all cases, this resulted in a deterioration in health and significant harm. ME/CFS is not a functional disorder, but a serious physiological condition.

For an idea of how forced hospitalization of ME/CFS patient looks like, see this pediatric case described by Dr. Nigel Speight in this talk from 2014:

If you’re curious how this case developed, see this talk from 2019:

In the 11th version of the International Classification of Diseases, WHO specifically includes all three names of ME/CFS in “exclusions” under the category of functional disorders (bodily distress disorders). That means it should not be diagnosed as such.

CDC states:

“ME/CFS is a biological illness, not a psychologic disorder. Patients with ME/CFS are neither malingering nor seeking secondary gain. These patients have multiple pathophysiological changes that affect multiple systems.”
https://www.cdc.gov/me-cfs/about/index.html

National Institutes of Health (NIH) state:

“At least one-quarter of individuals with ME/CFS are bedbound or housebound at some point in the illness and most never regain their pre-disease level of functioning” https://www.nih.gov/mecfs/about-mecfs

I am not sure Swedish authorities understand written language, but this should be somehow communicated to them. Perhaps in hieroglyphs, runes, sign language, smoke signals, or comic sans size 50?

Overall, forced hospitalization and “activation” regimes are the absolute worst you can do for ME/CFS patients. It will almost certainly result in tremendous harm in severe cases. Therefore, it should not be done. This kind of abuse is completely unacceptable.

Please share.