Writers' Cramp and the Craft Palsies

Her doctoral dissertation concerns the current pandemic of Repetitive Strain Injury, RSI, also known as Cumulative Trauma Disorder CTD. This is an epidemic of somatization (hysteria affecting the soma, the body). Somatization is also known as 'functional overlay' or 'functional disorder' by the legal profession.

Her book, Constructing RSI : Belief and Desire, has been published by University of New South Wales (UNSW) Press and examines the origins , the medical philosophies that allowed it to thrive and the issues surrounding those who were afflicted.

She is frequently called to consult in RSI cases both in Australia and in the United Kingdom.

Dr Lucire is interested in developing a consultancy practice to the Legal Profession in the United States and Canada as well as her Australian and British work. She would be happy to travel overseas and to review the large numbers of claimants involved in class actions, to conduct appropriate interviews and to provide litigation standard reports. While most RSI cases were litigated in the Workers Compensation Jurisdiction in Australia, the same cases are litigated in common law, in the UK. and this involves allegations of employer negligence. In the United States, RSI cases seem mostly found in the area of product liability litigation where the structure or some other aspect of keyboards or other equipment is some how viewed as noxious.

This web page has been set up as an information sheet about the disorder popularly called Repetitive Strain Injury, Cumulative Trauma Disorder and it has been set up to familiarise the reader with this standard view, the one endorsed by the International Classification of Diseases. The currently dominant paradigm, that such symptoms are caused by injuries attributed to many and varied conditions, is a new, non-medical notion. Its promulgation by well-meaning occupational health and safety activists is at the base of the pandemic. Epidemics of RSI have followed closely on campaigns to prevent it.

The defence that Dr Lucire provides in RSI cases rests on the correct diagnosis being made in each case and from this diagnosis flows an attribution of causation. Physical, organic complaints have physical causes: somatization is psychogenic and its causes are mental: beliefs, desires and psychosocial stress. Life events and predicament determine vulnerability as do attitudes which translate into personality styles and values.

The following information concerns the theory which is used in the defence of RSI and CTD cases, so that the reader, the potential client , the defence attorney, might apprise him or herself of the potential value of this work in their defence of such claims. The same theory can be applied to cases where other organs or the back are affected with symptoms which do not submit to a lesion diagnosis, and the claimant believes him or herself to be suffering a cumulative trauma or other injury.

Constructing RSI : Belief and Desire (table of contents)

Acknowledgements

Reviews for Constructing RSI : Belief and Desire

London Review of Books

The Telegraph, London

British Medical Journal

Canberra Times [1]

Canberra Times [2]

Psychiatry And Law

Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences

Professor Arthur Kleinman

Professor Edward Shorter,

Professor Stephanie Short, Professor of Public Health, Griffith University

Some of her publications are available on this page. The citation classic, Neurosis in the Workplace was published in the Medical Journal of Australia in 1986, and it provided the first challenge to the Injury Paradigm. Other papers on the RSI Epidemic include RSI an Overview, The Social Iatrogenesis of RSI, and RSI: Resistance to Paradigm Shift, Life Events and Somatization in RSI Claimants.

Other more general publications include The Role of the Psychiatric Assessor in Cases where Injury has been Alleged, Differential Diagnosis of Injury, Somatization and Malingering. Dr Lucire has also written about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome which can be an issue in early retirement or permanent disability litigation. She maintains an interest in defending cases where total allergy syndrome or multiple allergies have been alleged. These are cases where evidence for toxic cause must be found in the real world, rather than in the beliefs, behaviour and experience of the afflicted.

Articles

1. Neurosis in the Workplace. 1986 Medical Journal of Australia 145: 323-7. This paper has been given many citations both in medical and in social science journals.

2. Social Iatrogenesis of Epidemic Neurosis. (RSI) Journal of Community Health Studies XX (2) 1988.

3. When Emotions get Converted. On the genesis of RSI as Conversion Disorder Safety Australia, Feb. 1986. Read at Medical Mythology conference, Nov. 1985.

4. Institutionalised & Rewarded Neurosis: RSI, the Australian Disease. Australian Institute of Management Journal, Apr. 1986.

5. Differential Diagnosis of Conversion. Read at RANZCP Annual Conference, May 1986.

6. Resistance to paradigm shift, The Injury Theory versus the Psycho social Model of Causation in Epidemic RSI. Read at RANZCP Annual Conference, May 1986. Analysis of sources of resistance to the psycho social model.

7. The First Forensic Interview for Patients Claiming RSI - the Use of a Pre-Printed Proforma. Presented November 1985 and available in video from the Institute of Psychiatry, Rozelle Hospital. Also available in print.

8. Square Pegs in Round Holes: A Comparison of Medical & Legal Concepts of "Causation" in Epidemic Neurosis, using the epidemic of RSI Proceedings of Conference of the Medico-legal Society of Victoria. Kotakinabalu 1986.

9. RSI, an Epidemic of Craft Palsy. A chapter commissioned by Dr. (now professor) Professor Ivor Jones, then Snr. lecturer in Psychiatry, Melbourne University, for text book, "Essentials of Australian Forensic Psychiatry", 1986. (This book was never published)

10. Repetitive Strain Injury - An Epidemic of Craft Palsy. Proceedings of the Medico-Legal Society of NSW. Vol. 8, pages 134-146.

11. Life events and getting sick with "RSI". Presented RANZCP Forensic Section Conference Nov 15-20, 1991.

12. Health Status and Predicament in Compensation Seekers for RSI.

13. Health Status and Predicament in Claimants for RSI 1986-1992. RANZCP Forensic Section Conference, 2001