The media coverage for the Millions Missing protest to raise awareness of ME in Scotland is to be welcomed and will hopefully lead to a much-needed conversation around this often misunderstood condition.
The debate around the illness once known as ‘yuppie flu’ in the 1980s because sufferers tended to be professional people between 20 and 40 contributed to the slew of negativity that proceeded to shape debate for decades – based on nothing more than ignorance. Outbreaks of a previously unknown illness were recorded as far back as the 1930s and the term myalgic encephalomyelitis was first used after a comparable outbreak at the Royal Free Hospital in London in the 1950s.
ME is a systemic neuro-immune disease with debilitating and often disabling symptoms leaving the patient with an inability to carry out everyday activities becasue of, among many other symptoms, profound fatigue. Shamefully people with the condition, which affects more women than men, have been treated terribly for years. The image of a stereotypical ME sufferer has been allowed to form – white, middle-class, educated, a bit sensitive, probably a woman, who thinks they’re ill but ‘it’s all in their head’; someone who listens to fey indie bands like Belle and Sebastian whose lead singer Stuart Murdoch has ME and has spoken out powerfully in support of the Millions Missing worldwide protest.
A generation of working-class Scots first became aware of ME when Celtic and Scotland footballer Davie Provan was struck down with the condition also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and had to pack the game in at the tender age of 29.