Chronic Fatigue Syndrome 1
MD’s greatest regret as a junior doctor was not to take the time to understand ME (Myalgic Encephalopathy). As a result, MD was infected with the same prejudices as many of his peers, namely that ME isn’t a biological illness and that it predominantly affects middle class patients (‘Yuppie flu’). Both beliefs are entirely wrong, and I apologise unreservedly for them. They have caused huge distress and damage to those with ME. Medicine has particularly failed those with severe ME, many of whom have lived for decades with a very disabling disease and the enduring falsehood that it’s ‘all in the mind’ or due to ‘faulty beliefs’. Psychological illness can be as distressing and real as any physical illness, and often the two occur together. But ample evidence exits of biological abnormalities in patients with ME, though we are some way off having a definitive pathological test and effective drug treatments.
ME is often used synonymously with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), but the illness is far more than fatigue. MD’s view – working in an NHS clinic for young people with chronic fatigue – is that ‘CFS/ME’ is a cluster of disorders which centre not
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