Given the number of vaguely defined, subjective and rather too conveniently diagnosable conditions included in that list, not to mention your use of "etc" at the end,
These are only "vaguely defined" if you if you don't know much about abnormal psychology and mental health. The mental conditions I listed are very well defined. And I am not quite sure why you are objecting to the word "etcetera."
In its race for respectability and the influence it thinks it deserves, Psychiatry has come up with labels for almost every quirk of personality and every kind of apparent non-conformity to arbitrary norms.
These mental health conditions are by no stretch of the imagination "quirks of personality". There can hideous degrees of suffering involved with many mental health conditions, mental torment that you could not even begin to imagine. These conditions are not "quirks of personality"; these condition can be are serious aberrations from a healthy mental state. They are a travesty of the human condition.
I have a very strong hatred towards mental ill health conditions, as I know from direct experience how hideous they can be. They are a scourge on humanity, in my view.
And mental health conditions cause largely unrecognized damage to human society: the Nazi party comprised a bunch of psychotic psychopaths, and I would suggest this underpinned their insane mass murdering of millions.
But such labelling can be uniquely damaging to ME/CFS patients on the receiving end of it, as well as detrimental to progress in finally understanding the disease.
If you have horrible mental suffering due to a mental health condition, once this condition is identified and labeled, this can lead to the appropriate treatments, and thus hopefully amelioration of symptoms. I cannot see how such labeling can be damaging to ME/CFS patients, except in the case where ME/CFS is misdiagnosed as say depression.
The fact that ME/CFS patients do have a high prevalence of psychiatric comorbidities means that even if we look at ME/CFS itself as a neurological disease, it's still important to address and treat any psychiatric comorbidities that an ME/CFS patient may have.
However, I agree it is a sensitive issue in so far as ME/CFS has been for so long viewed as a psychogenic "all in your head" condition, so it can certainly be damaging if medical professionals continue to take this erroneoius "all in your head" view of ME/CFS.
Even those ME/CFS patients with serious mental health co-morbidities that call for appropriate psychiatric care stand to lose much from the continued prevalence of the idea that ME/CFS is or may be a psychatric disorder. As long as that lie has life in it, our hope of a cure is jeopardised.
In my view, the issue is less about classifying what ME/CFS is, and more about pinpointing the etiology of ME/CFS. The ongoing mistake that the psychiatric profession is making is assuming that ME/CFS, as well as mental health conditions of all sorts, are largely psychogenic in etiology.
Psychogenic means that the cause of an illness is psychological rather than physical / biochemical. In above posts, the terms "life circumstances" and "environmental causes" have been used to denote such psychogenic etiologies.
I think the grave error of psychiatry is to assume that not only ME/CFS, but also conditions like depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, autism, etc are psychogenic, rather than looking for biochemical causes.
This bias to thinking in terms of psychogenic causes for mental health conditions is systemic in psychiatry, and has to change. It is in fact changing, and the new generation of psychiatrists and psychologists seem more interested in examining biochemical causes of mental health conditions, such as viral etiologies. But this change is not yet fast enough nor extensive enough. The psychogenic paradigm still holds much sway, and until this paradigm is pruned back into proper proportion, and research into biochemical explanations for mental health is expanded, I think progress in understanding and treating mental health conditions will be hampered.
