Journal of Psychosomatic Research, Vol. 47, No. 4, pp. 385397, 1999
PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL ATTITUDES IN CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME
BARBARA WOOD and SIMON WESSELY
(Received 10 September 1998; accepted 26 January 1999)
We present a large scale controlled study of personality and social attitudes in
CFS patients.
Contrary to our hypotheses and the media accounts of CFS, we found no evidence that CFS patients are characterized by particularly hostile attitudes to mental distress.
It is possible that such attitudes still existed in our sample, but the responders were unwilling to admit to them.
We consider this to be unlikely. It is possible that our sample has a pro-psychiatry bias, because, although we operate a broad-based service in a general hospital, we make no secret of our professional affiliations.
However, when we participated in a multicenter study with colleagues in Boston and Sydney, the results showed that our patients were typical of those seen in the other centers, and that our service did not see a particularly "psychiatric" group [25].
We consider it more likely that it is the media perception of CFS that is in error, and that the media portrayal of CFS reflects an atypical and unrepresentative stereotype.
Our study also failed to demonstrate any overall differences in personality traits that may underlie negative attitudes to mental illness or psychiatry, namely social desirability, defensiveness, and harm avoidance
http://kcl.ac.uk/content/1/c6/01/47/68/100Wood1999.pdf