Thread by @ibdgirl76

Anna Lembke, "expert" witness, making I believe$750/hr, has made many derogatory statements. Remember, she is a Psychiatrist, and not a pain dr. That doesn't stop her, though. I am going to add some of her quotes to this thread. 1/

Anna Lembke 6/15/17 said "But the poor and people of color have definitely suffered during this opioid epidemic.” “Disability insurance has become the modern social safety net. Disability became a very attractive way for people to simply earn a living.”

3/ “I have had many patients over the years whose primary identity is that of being a patient, maintaining that illness is not just crucial to their identity but also crucial to their income if they’re on disability. If they were to get better then they would lose that income"

4/ Illness as identity fosters victim narrative, victimhood has a right to be compensated n in the context of a victim narrative, people can’t get better. It’s not an adaptive narrative b/c it requires them to remain ill n always look outside themselves for somebody to heal them

5/ "The professional patient is that individual who completely identifies with being the patient as their core identity in the world but also relies on the disability income to pay their bills"

6/ "We eliminated welfare in the 1990’s and we largely replaced it with federally funded disability for medical problems. We are forcing individuals to be ill in order to secure an income."

7/ "Patients adopt the patient role for “psychological reasons, financial reasons. Being ill is a very attractive societal role. If you have to choose between being an ill person and being a homeless unemployed person, you would choose the illness identity.”

8/ "We have now medicalized poverty using a pill to fix it. Patients are incentivized to adopt the sick role.We have bloating disability rules, not b/c we have more people who are sick and need to be on disability, but b/c going on to disability has become a way to pay the bills"

9/ "Driving overprescribing is this idea about pain being dangerous. We now believe that pain can leave a kind of psychic scar that sets people up for future pain. This is not always how doctors conceptualized pain."

10/ "Doctors used to believe that pain was salutary, that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. We don’t believe that anymore about pain. Patients’ expectations are very high."

@threadreaderapp please unroll