By Lori Dennis
March 4, 2017

Every day, in doctors’ offices across the US—as well as in Canada, the UK, Ireland, Amsterdam, Australia, Sweden, in 80 countries and on every continent—chronic Lyme disease sufferers are being told that their debilitating, destructive, multi-systemic illness is nothing more than a small nuisance condition that is really just ‘all in their head’.

For more than forty years, mainstream medicine has kept chronic Lyme disease in the shadows. The disease itself, as well as the political machinations of this disease, plunges sufferers down a complicated, confusing, and terrifying abyss—a black hole of personal anguish, conflicting medical views, widespread corruption, and unrelenting health care navigation.

Today, chronic Lyme disease has reached pandemic proportions, with a grossly underreported 300,000 cases in the US alone, and millions suffering worldwide. This is a critical time for mental health professionals to step up for the sake of millions who are chronically ill, infirm and medically abandoned.

As mainstream medicine continues to turn its back, invalidating, denying, ignoring and even mocking the sufferers of this very real chronic illness, the mental health profession has a moral and ethical obligation to create a system of care for those who are sick and dying, who are without medical support and are left to struggle entirely on their own. What we desperately need is a wake-up call to psychiatrists and all mental health care providers, asking you to become educated about this infectious disease and be aware that it must be used as a differential diagnosis.

How have I come to know this Lyme world so intimately?

SNIP