Tag: interview study

Chronic fatigue syndrome: a follow up study

Abstract:

Forty-six of 47 patients diagnosed as having chronic fatigue and offered treatment four years previously were followed up. Twenty-nine patients were interviewed, three patients refused an interview, and information on the remaining 14 was obtained from their general practitioners. All the instruments used at interview had been used in the initial study. The long-term prognosis for patients with chronic fatigue syndrome who have initially responded to treatment is good. Spontaneous recovery in those who declined or who did not benefit from treatment is unlikely. Patients who continue to fulfil the criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome four years after they were initially diagnosed are likely to have had more somatic disorders, to have been more fatigued, and to have had a previous psychiatric history when they were initially assessed.

Comment in: Chronic fatigue syndrome. [J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 1995]

 

Source: Bonner D, Ron M, Chalder T, Butler S, Wessely S. Chronic fatigue syndrome: a follow up study. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 1994 May;57(5):617-21. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1072927/

You can read the full article here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1072927/pdf/jnnpsyc00035-0089.pdf

 

Society, mind and body in chronic fatigue syndrome: an anthropological view

Abstract:

An anthropological view of chronic fatigue syndrome places the study of illness in social context. Data from an interview study of 50 chronically fatigued patients demonstrate the relation of local social worlds–families, workplaces, communities–to the meaning and experience of illness.

Negative life events and difficulties, multiple commitments, and a hectic pace are among prominent themes in the subjects’ local worlds. These themes are reflected in: (1) attributions of illness onset to social sources, (2) the symbolism of the core complaint of fatigue, and (3) an illness-induced, positively valued lifestyle transformation suggesting the rejection of culturally prescribed ‘busyness’.

Dichotomous definitions of the relation of mind and body are shown to be part of culture, not Nature, in the paper’s second section. The ‘mind-body dichotomy’ and the differing values attached to physical and psychological disorders by a naturalistic scientific paradigm explain the delegitimizing experiences of sufferers, who find their illness dismissed as psychosomatic and therefore ‘not real’.

A conceptualization of chronic fatigue syndrome which links local social worlds to psychological distress, felt bodily sensation and biological changes is proposed. Collaborative teams of social scientists and medical researchers might fruitfully pursue aspects of social context in relation to psychiatric, immunological and viral dimensions of the illness.

 

Source: Ware NC. Society, mind and body in chronic fatigue syndrome: an anthropological view. Ciba Found Symp. 1993;173:62-73; discussion 73-82. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8491108