Comment on: Managing chronic fatigue syndrome in children. [BMJ. 1997]
Editor—Action for ME is one of the two patient support groups referred to in “editor’s choice” in the issue of 7 June. The organisation, which represents 8000 members, accepts that any illness can have both physical and psychological components. In fact, for the past five years it has offered psychological support in the form of professional telephone counselling, and our journal has carried numerous articles testifying to a more complex understanding than the editor implies.
What we have a problem with, however, is some medical journals’ overemphasis on psychological factors when they refer to myalgic encephalomyelitis. Provocative features about hysteria and wandering wombs have not helped.1 Because of the possibility of cognitive malfunction,2 we believe that getting better is more complex that letting go of “symptom dependency” and “therapeutic nihilism”—terms that are frequently used in research attempting to show that abnormalities are not components of a primary pathological process but are secondary to behavioural aspects of myalgic encephalomyelitis, such as reduced physical activity.
You can read the rest of this comment here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2127601/pdf/9361554.pdf
Source: Jacobs G. Chronic fatigue syndrome in children. Patient organisations are denied a voice. BMJ. 1997 Oct 11;315(7113):949. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2127601/