Comment on: Cerebral perfusion in chronic fatigue syndrome and depression. [Br J Psychiatry. 2000]
I found MacHale et al’s (2000) discussion of their results confusing. According to the abstract and methods, they screened their patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) to exclude those with depression. Then they examined this group further using a standardised psychiatric interview (Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia), in order to “ exclude subjects with current psychiatric illness, with a particular emphasis on depression”. The data from the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression are difficult to interpret given the number of illnessrated items, but the scores did not indicate a significant degree of depression either. So, having excluded “subjects with depression or anxiety”, why did the authors claim in their discussion that “the main limitation of the present study is that our CFS subjects had high levels of depression”?
You can read the rest of this comment here: http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/177/5/470.long
Source: Goudsmit E. Chronic fatigue syndrome and depression. Br J Psychiatry. 2000 Nov;177:470. http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/177/5/470.long