Multiple chemical sensitivities and other "environmental illness": a psychiatrist's view.

The clinical ecology subculture, like earlier medical subcultures, is the product of patient concerns that the medical establishment cannot allay by treatment or by reassurance. For social and behavioral scientists, it represents a "natural" experiment that can be studied. For those physicians who believe that clinical ecology is without scientific basis generally and/or that its practitioners interpret laboratory results incorrectly, it is a challenge and an irritant. The clinical ecologist-physician feels rejected and the victim of bias and unfair attack. The patient in this subculture feels that finally he has found someone who understands him and is trying to help him, but that he must pay the price of being disapproved or rejected by his former physicians.