I feel that the whole article sums up completely what is wrong with the treatment of M.E. / C.F.S. in this country. I have had M.E. for 20 years, in my personal opinion the greatest impediment to the objective identification of the physiological causes of the condition, required for the subsequent postulating and formulating of a remedial solution, is the NHS’s prevalent dependency upon psychological treatments for this condition.

I do not say that GET and CBT do not have a beneficial effect upon sufferers, as clearly it helps to provide the ill with a positive course of action, giving them something to do. However the negatives of assigning a “fear” quotient to the patient, whereby you start with the premise that the illness in their minds and that their journey towards acceptable health is being impeded by their “fear” of activity is simply insulting and unhelpful.

My experience was that I was a county athlete, part-time ski instructor and weekly squash player, I already had an Honours degree in law, master’s degree in business administration and was in the last 6 months of a European master’s degree in international business at Europe’s oldest business school in Paris. I had place to continue post-graduate study at a New York university and was working and sponsored by the UK company pioneering deferrable load management with US power utilities. I would assume that this confirms that I was not workshy and that maybe I had very little to worry about, as my future seemed golden. Following a bout of glandular fever I started to suffer with all the now recognised symptoms of M.E. and though for 5 years I had to listen to medical professionals tell me it was stress, finally I came across a doctor in Oxford who diagnosed me with M.E.; this diagnosis has been confirmed on several occasions by professionals with knowledge of this area.

Despite this diagnosis, for many years I have thought that when (very occasionally now as there is no point) I go to the G.P. surgery I feel there is a large box that flashes up on the doctors screen saying “hypochondriac”. I now know why. Last year I had to have some teeth removed, so I asked my doctor to write a letter to the surgeon outlining my medical history. I opened the letter before giving it to the surgeon and in two pages of explanation she only mentioned M.E. once, on one single line. She did go on ad nauseum about the diagnosis of stress at the outset (which in light of the later diagnosis of M.E. was obviously wrong) and mentioned all the NHS and privately funded CBT and GET courses id been on. If I’d read this letter without knowing the facts Id have thought I was a hypochondriac. I would thought that the M.E. diagnosis by the Head of Psychiatry at a Russell Group university and the same diagnosis by a neurologist at a leading teaching hospital would have put the “stress” label to bed, but clearly not.

Assigning “fear” to the patient is the coward’s way out.  It places the responsibility for the condition and its effects on to the patient, thereby absolving the practitioner of the blame if the patient doesn’t get better. M.E. has repeatedly been recognised as an auto-immune condition and telling the patient to stop being a baby, grow-up and stop being scared is not going to solve that.

Finally, I exercise in the gym every night, I have done so for 10 years. My ability to exercise varies by what appears to be cycles of tolerance to physical activity. 10 years of this and I can only manage 15 minutes at best of low aerobic or light weights activity. I am not scared of the consequence of over doing it, I know what will happen because I experience frequently if I overdo it. It is not a fear of it, it is an acceptance of the consequence, yet trying daily to push myself forward.

The open-minded practitioner would say “ right I can see that when you started you looked great and perfectly normal, but ten minutes of yoga has left you shaky, unstable and clearly there is something physical going on here, let’s see what’s changes in your body to cause this”, not “you look a bit stressed to me  I think you might need a phycologist”.