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Query: UMLS:C0015674 (chronic fatigue syndrome)
 2,978 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Our society in many situations tends to blame the victim. Questions are raised whether this occurs more commonly with women and what its effects are. An examination of the treatment of women as patients may help answer these questions. In 1971 twice as many men as women were on chronic hemodialysis, raising the possibility of different allotment of medical resources and different admission criterion for this very expensive therapy. This example only indicates that women may be treated differently. The following commentary indicates women may be blamed for their illness. A prestigious medical journal has published articles claiming the clinical syndrome, Iceland disease, is really epidemic hysteria. One of the three main reasons given for such a claim is that it occurs primarily in women. Aside from the fact that many physiologic diseases do have skewed sex ratios, one wonders why it is considered inappropriate for a physiologic disease to have a male/femal ratio different from 1.0 yet not so for a psychological disease. Once women are put into this category, in essence blamed for their illness, there will be no more search for pathology that might be corrected. they may undergo detrimental therapy, in this case removal of their uteri-a hysterectomy, probably in the true sense of the word.
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PMID:The victim is guilty. 95 23

This chapter outlines the recorded epidemiological history of PVFS (including the early epidemics of myalgic encephalomyelitis) and the development of the concept, including the realisation that endemic cases also occur. Cases of PVFS are still not recorded by the Surveillance Centre for Communicable Diseases, so it is very difficult to detect and monitor any outbreak in the community, since each GP may only have two or three such patients and would, therefore, not be aware of an epidemic in the community as a whole if it occurred. Epidemiological issues raised by the early epidemics, including the delineation of the syndrome, the question of bias, the role of hysteria and the role of depression; the issue of symptom distribution, and its implications for aetiology; and a multiaxial framework for understanding the association with psychological symptoms are discussed. The value of a future multidisciplinary research programme designed to disentangle direct and predisposing causes of PVFS is emphasised.
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PMID:Post-viral fatigue syndrome. Epidemiology: lessons from the past. 179 93

This study aimed to investigate the psychological characteristics of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS: Holmes et al. 1988). A battery of psychometric instruments comprising the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and the Lazarus Ways of Coping (WoC) inventory, was administered to a sample of clinically-defined CFS sufferers (N = 58), to a comparison group of chronic pain (CP) patients (N = 81) and to a group of healthy controls matched for sex and age with the CFS sample (N = 104). Considerable overlap was found between CFS and CP patients at the level of both physical and psychological symptoms. This raises the possibility that CFS sufferers are a sub-population of CP patients. However, while there was some commonality between CFS and CP patients in terms of personality traits, particularly the MMPI 'neurotic triad' (hypochondriasis, depression and hysteria), CFS patients showed more deviant personality traits reflecting raised levels on the first MMPI factor, emotionality. Moreover, results were not consistent with the raised emotionality being a reaction to the illness, but rather were consistent with the hypothesis that emotionality is a predisposing factor for CFS. The majority of CFS patients fell within four personality types, each characterized by the two highest MMPI scale scores. One type (N = 20) reported a lack of psychological symptoms or emotional disturbance contrary to the overall trend for the CFS sample. This group conformed to the ICD-10 classification of neurasthenia.
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PMID:Psychiatric symptoms, personality and ways of coping in chronic fatigue syndrome. 187 40

The post-viral syndrome is described and its aetiology is discussed. Many features of the syndrome point to hysteria and altered medical perception as causes but much evidence for organic disease is also presented. Current interest focuses on recent or persisting infection with Coxsackie viruses. A balanced view of the syndrome as a mixture of organic and psychiatric dysfunction is offered. Widely differing estimates of incidence are quoted, possibly owing to varying medical awareness of the syndrome. Many drug therapies have been tried without success and management of the post-viral syndrome is hampered by the reluctance of patients to accept psychiatric support once the diagnosis is known. Many names have been proposed for the syndrome, some implying a purely physical or purely psychogenic aetiology: post-viral syndrome is suggested as the most appropriate term. Increased awareness of the syndrome will lead to an increase in its diagnosis in general practice: the role of the Myalgic Encephalomyelitis Association in promoting a combined psychiatric and organic view of the disease among sufferers is emphasized.
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PMID:The post-viral syndrome: a review. 332 Mar 58

The reports of the 15 recorded outbreaks of benign myalgic encephalomyelitis have been reviewed and in one instance the original clinical data studied. We believe that a lot of these epidemics were psychosocial phenomena caused by one of two mechanisms, either mass hysteria on the part of the patients or altered medical perception of the community. We suggest that the name "myalgia nervosa" should be used for any future cases of functional disorder which present the same clinical picture.
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PMID:Concept of benign myalgic encephalomyelitis. 541 96

From a re-analysis of the case notes of patients with Royal Free disease it is concluded that there is little evidence of an organic disease affecting the central nervous system and that epidemic hysteria is a much more likely explanation. The data which support this hypothesis are the high attack rate in females compared with males; the intensity of the malaise compared with the slight pyrexia; the presence of subjective features similar to those seen in a previous epidemic of hysterical overbreathing; the glove-and-stocking distribution of the anaesthesia; and the normal findings in special investigations. Finally, a deliberate attempt by one of the authors to produce an electromyographic record similar to that reported in Royal Free disease was successful.
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PMID:Royal Free epidemic of 1955: a reconsideration. 541 11

Out of the concept of neurasthenia, the main non-psychotic diagnosis of nineteenth-century psychiatry besides hysteria, and on the basis of psychophysiological problems of his own, self-diagnosed as neurasthenia, Freud developed the notion of 'actual neurosis', a 'contentless psychic state' manifested by various somatic symptoms and a depressive mood, which he attributed to a chemical factor associated with aberrant sexual practices and in particular masturbation. Rejected by post-Freudian analysts as such along with the diagnosis of neurasthenia, the concept of 'actual neurosis' has survived under various theoretical schemes that seek to explain psychosomatic illness and somatisation, in general, with its concomitant poverty of affects and dearth of fantasy life. In more recent years, the concept of 'actual neurosis' has resurfaced under the label of chronic fatigue syndrome, a medical entity thought to be an immunological deficiency, while in psychoanalysis Freud's idea of a contentless mental state has been replaced by that of unconscious fantasy and symbolisation at a pre-genital or pre-verbal level.
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PMID:'Actual neurosis' and psychosomatic medicine: the vicissitudes of an enigmatic concept. 1252 36