Controversies Related To Chronic Fatigue Syndrome - Perception

Perception

Epidemic cases of benign myalgic encephalomyelitis were called mass hysteria by psychiatrists McEvedy and Beard in 1970, provoking criticism in letters to the editor of the British Medical Journal by attending physicians, researchers, and nurses who fell ill. The psychiatrists were faulted for not investigating the patients they described, and their conclusions have been refuted. In 1978 a symposium held at the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) concluded that epidemic myalgic encephalomyelitis was a distinct disease entity.

In an article in the Journal of Clinical Pathology, Malcolm Hooper argued myalgic encephalomyelitis should be used in place of CFS, and that research in the UK has been hijacked by a "lobby of psychologists and psychiatrists" holding significant power within the medical fraternity, with a resultant "gross abuse/neglect of patients."

In her 1997 book Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Culture, literary critic and feminist Elaine Showalter argues that chronic fatigue syndrome is a "hysterical narrative," a modern manifestation of hysteria, a self-perpetuating "cultural symptom of anxiety and stress" historically assigned to women. She says that CFS is a new form of "effort syndrome", a disorder with a long history. Showalter says the media, especially the internet, help to spread the mass hysteria and doctors bow to pressure to accept the new diagnosis because they do not want to be seen as "uncaring." In her book she says that CFS symptoms are genuine, whether psychologically or organically caused, or both, and that the main problem is that people do not believe that psychiatric disorders are "real". In 2001 she wrote in a new preface to a reprint of her book that CFS patients responded to her ideas with hate mail and death threats.