Is Morgellons a psychological illness?

Question

Sufferers see threads emerging from their bodies. Is this real?

Answer 1

I am a Morgellons survivor.... currently 100% remission.

It is real, unfortunately it also affects the brain... so many sufferers are a bit loony.

There are lots of conflicting ideas about M, I can trace it to a bite from a bug (a thripe), within a few days the itching and the threads started.

I laugh at all the cutters and pasters who quote wikipedia for everything.

Answer 2

POSTED: 11:06 am CST March 2, 2005
UPDATED: 11:09 am CST March 3, 2005

Doctors Debate Credibility Of Morgellons Disease
Patients Say Growth Causes Them To Itch Uncontrollably





HOUSTON --

A growing problem in Texas has some victims feeling like something is living under their skin.

Patients Try To Convince Doctors That Skin Disease Exists

But, is it a real problem or just their imagination?

That is the fight that is playing out between some doctors, nurses and government health agencies. Kaye Koeberle, a Morgellons disease patient from Houston, told Local 2 that an unexplainable growth caused her to itch uncontrollably before the growth felt like it had crawled out of her skin.

"When I would get out of the shower, it would itch so bad I could hardly stand it. One day, I was in front of the mirror and I could see these white things, five of them, just sticking out of my shoulder," Koeberle said.

Nurse practitioner Ginger Savely, who studies the disease, said she has seen dozens of cases in her office."I think this is like a horrible science fiction movie. First off, all you have is this horrible and scary situation going on in your own body that's different than anything you've ever heard of, so it feels like you've been inhabited by aliens, and then to add insult to injury, no one will believe you," Savely said.

Some patients said they have even tried to perform their own research to show doctors what is living beneath their skin.

"I took (a sample) and put it in a petri dish. Those filaments would grow and get longer and longer, and curl around the petri dish," Koeberle said.

Even though many doctors do not recognize Morgellons as a disease, Savely thinks the sheer numbers of people reporting symptoms add to its credibility. California is the only state with more reported cases than Texas.

"I can't believe the people from all over, all walks of life, would describe something the very same way if it were a delusion," Savely said.

And, if it isn't bad enough that there is no treatment, trying to get the research completed to prove the creepy crawlers really exist has proven to be just as difficult. There is no funding available to research it because government health agencies do not recognize it as a disease.

"I always feel that people should keep an open mind and I think there are scientific experiments, what we call evidence-based medicine, that can prove or disprove that an organism is causing this," University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston dermatologist Dr. Stephen Tucker said.

Doctors said they have noticed that many patients who complain about Morgellons symptoms have also been treated or are undergoing treatment for Lyme disease, which suppresses the immune system. The doctors said when the immune system is corrected, the crawling feelings under the patient's skin is often corrected too.

Answer 3

Probably more like a neurological illness caused by nerve damage and chemical imbalances in the brain which may have been caused by an actual infestation that is no longer there. I'm sure you know how to use wikipedia so I won't bother with that simple nonsense. Here is a link to the Morgellons research foundation that gives more detailed info http://www.morgellons.org/

Answer 4

I Have suffered from morgellons over ten years now, and its frustrated to know that the medical professional would deem you delusional because it doent match their textbook teachings. Check out Morgellons on the yahoo
groups under health. If you don't have it, thank your lucky stars. They dont know what it is or how to contact it

Answer 5

Eczema patients can avoid scratchy fibers for softer ones like bamboo, cotton, or silk, which are gentler on the skin. Opting to buy organic fibers can also be a wise, healthy, and eco-friendly alternative. Learn here https://tr.im/A8rI9

Answer 6

Yes it is a real medical condition and it CAN be psychological.

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgellons
"Morgellons or Morgellons disease is a controversial name for an alleged polysymptomatic syndrome characterized by patients finding fibers on their skin, which they believe are related to other symptoms, including intense itching, skin lesions, as well as a wide range of other chronic symptoms. These symptoms are occasionally accompanied by the belief in an infestation by some unknown arthropod or parasite. The term Morgellons is not in accepted use by the medical community and the syndrome is widely held by the medical community to be a type of delusional parasitosis. There is no agreed-upon physical cause, etiology, diagnostic criteria or proven treatment. Pressure from patients, including doctors and nurses who claim to have a host of difficult symptoms, resulted in a June 2006 statement from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that it had begun organizing a committee for the purpose of investigating Morgellons to determine whether it exists.

Differential diagnoses
The symptoms of patients presenting with Morgellons are varied, and may match several other medical conditions. Frequently these symptoms may then be diagnosed as any of a number of conditions including:

Scabies - an infestation of the mite Sarcoptes scabei.
Lice - an infestation of parasitic insects.
Atopic Dermatitis or Eczema - a common skin condition with various causes including stress.
Neurodermatitis - Eczema or other skin condition exacerbated by scratching
Tinea - A fungal infection of the skin or hair.
Folliculitis - An infection of the hair follicles.
Cellulitis - A skin infection.
Seborrhea - A condition due to over-active sebaceous glands
Impetigo - A rash caused by bacterial infection
Compulsive skin picking - Obsessive picking at ones own skin.
Drug side effects - from use, overuse, or withdrawal.
If a specific complaint is not identified, the doctor could diagnose a medically unexplained physical symptoms (MUPS) syndrome, such as fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome. Diagnosis of MUPS is seldom a satisfactory situation for the patient, as many patients feel this implies it is "all in their head." This can lead to an adversarial doctor-patient relationship, [12] which can develop into an iatrogenic neurosis, thus complicating the situation.

Doctors do not offer a diagnosis of Morgellons. While sufferers often initially present with a self-diagnosis, they also continue to self-diagnose after conventional treatments for the medical diagnosis seem not to be working, or after they refuse to accept the diagnosis. At this point the patient is sometimes diagnosed with delusional parasitosis.

Delusional parasitosis
Presentations of Morgellons are frequently diagnosed as delusional parasitosis. The symptoms of delusional parasitosis are very similar to those presented by a Morgellons sufferer who rejects conventional diagnosis of their symptoms, or who presents a belief in the existence of an organism that cannot be observed except by the patient. There is no agreed upon differential diagnosis since Morgellons is not an accepted medical condition."

Morgellons suffers can have scabs and actual filaments under the skin. “Mary Leitao of McMurray, Pennsylvania, while investigating her son's unexplained rash. [1] She named the condition Morgellons (with a hard g), after a condition from the monograph A Letter to a Friend by Sir Thomas Browne, in 1690, wherein he describes several medical conditions in his experience, including that endemial distemper of children in Languedoc, called the morgellons, wherein they critically break out with harsh hairs on their backs.

Leitao, who has a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from the University of Massachusetts at Boston [4] and has worked as a chemist, formed the Morgellons Research Foundation (MRF) in 2002. The Morgellons Research Foundation website states: "This non-profit foundation is dedicated to finding the cause of an emerging infectious disease, which mimics scabies and lice." The foundation attempts to raise public awareness of Morgellons via web and press campaigns. They are conducting limited research into the cause of the symptoms. They also conduct letter writing campaigns to the U.S. Congress, urging that Morgellons be taken seriously.”

The foundation has had a lot of trouble and 8 members of the board of directors have resigned. One member actually recommended that people do not contribute to the foundation. “William Harvey of Houston, Texas, chairman of the MRF, champions the disease as real, probably related to Lyme disease, and claims success in treating it with antibiotics.” But, even Wikipedia is looking or a source on this, and some sort of verfiable proof.

The problem is that there is no research being done on it. There are no clinical studies and only one Medical Paper mentions the disease. The CDC (Centers of Disease Control) is going to do a research study, and its members first met in June 2006, so it is too early for any results.

If a person has a real medical condition with visible scabs then the doctors can treat it. If that person claims to to have seen filaments growing out of their body, then unless the doctor sees those filaments he is going to think his patients is having mental problems. So unitl the CDC study is finished it is not going to be considered a physical disease, but a mental one. Doctors only believe what they can see evidence for.

When doctors don't understand a disease then their first conclusion is that they are having to treat a psychological condition. I am a suffer of a chronic disease that is not very well understood, in fact I came down with the disease before it was recognized as a "real" medical condition. My current doctor told me flat out, "I don't believe in Fibromyalgia, but I will treat you." For my disease the only way to fight it is to treat the symptoms, like the pain and the insomnia, then use psychological support for the depression. Since my doctor is giving me the medications I need I am happy. The biggest problem is having to deal with the effects of the disease so I am concentrating on the psychological component. I understand where the doctors beliefs are based, they like to cure patients and don’t like to treat those that have a chronic condition (which is why the pain clinic avoids me like the plague). Hypochondriacs are common so they suspect everyone who isn’t clearly ill of being one and face it some people might be trying to pull a scam. Then like anyone if you can’t see the disease, if there isn’t a test for it, if the research hasn’t been done on it, then it is hard to believe it. I have come up against this wall many times.

Morgellons is a real medical condition, but its cause is unknown, and no research has been done on it yet. Many doctors have different opinions. The disease does have some psychological symptoms and it is very hard to prove exactly what the problem is. If a doctor saw the flies laying eggs, if they could take a filament and put it under a microscope, if they had something in their hands then they would accept it, until then they won’t.

Answer 7

Check this out:http://www.morgellons.org/

Answer 8

it looked at the palm of my hand today and it was blue............but its itsregular pinkish red now lolmaybe it was the cold or something

Answer 9

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgellons