Countrygirl
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Filmmaker Jennifer Brea in London last week CREDIT: ANDREW CROWLEY/TELEGRAPH
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-f...y-perceive-chronic-fatigue-syndrome/?WT.mc_id
24 OCTOBER 2017 • 7:00AM
It has been more than 60 years since a bewildering epidemic swept through the Royal Free Hospital in north London, rendering almost 300 members of staff incapacitated and forcing the place to close for three months.
At the time, in 1955, the mysterious, polio-like outbreak (called simply ‘Royal Free disease’ for a while) had no obvious cause, certainly no cure and varying symptoms – extreme tiredness, headaches, sore throats, depression, inflammation of the spinal cord – in each victim, frustrating doctors more than it fascinated them.
In the same year, the new condition was written up in the medical journal The Lancet as “myalgic encephalomyelitis”, later shortened to ME. The mystery remained, though. By the 1980s, despite further cases having been identified all over the world, the entire Royal Free episode was put down to “hysteria”, while the illness received the dismissive nickname “yuppie flu”. At best, doctors (and employers, and friends and family, and strangers) were sceptical of victims’ insistence their problems were physiological, not psychological. At worst, they were denounced as malingerers.
Today, there are thought to be roughly 250,000 sufferers of ME – also known as chronic fatigue syndrome, though sufferers often find the word 'fatigue' does nothing to help stigma – in the UK, and more than a million in the US, the majority of whom are women, though there are likely many more undiagnosed. It’s a condition that remains starved of research funding compared to other illnesses with a similar strike rate, and incredibly difficult to diagnose or even treat, meaning the lack of understanding and empathy from the general public persists.