AndyPR
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An article in Quartz by Jamison Hill
For the last six years, I have fought to legitimize an illness widely—and erroneously—believed to be “all in your head.”
I have myalgic encephalomyelitis, a debilitating multi-system disease that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conservatively estimates afflicts more than one million Americans. It is commonly known as chronic fatigue syndrome, a truly trivializing name that belittles what I and other sufferers live with. (Though it is preferable to the condescending term “yuppie flu.”) Doctors have told many people with the disease—including myself—that there is no treatment, and more often, that what we are experiencing is merely a manifestation of the mind.
The latter is the basis for psychosomatic theory, which is the idea that the mind can produce diseases. Diseases commonly thought to be psychosomatic—such as irritable bowel syndrome and Crohn’s disease—can pummel a healthy, thriving member of society without any indication of how. This theory became popular in the US in the early 20th century; Sigmund Freud is the most well-known name associated with it, who maintained that “hysteria” could cause any number of physical illnesses.