urbantravels
disjecta membra
- Messages
- 1,333
- Location
- Los Angeles, CA
Just something I wanted to get out there as it's been rattling around in the back of my brain for some time.
We so often critique overly-broad definitions of ME/CFS that sweep up fatigued people without "true," Canadian Consensus-defined ME/CFS, into the same wastebasket with us. Very often we describe this problem this way: "Those (other) people are probably just depressed!"
This doesn't strike me as very fair to people who have Idiopathic Chronic Fatigue - i.e., chronic fatigue (the symptom,) that does not *seem* to be explained by any biomedical findings, but which doesn't fit the CCC either. True, this kind of fatigue could be caused by depression. But it could be caused by lots of other things too.
Perhaps some of those those people who have idiopathic chronic fatigue do have some "recognized" disease or condition that simply hasn't been diagnosed properly - it could be a rare disease, or the right tests haven't been run (which is all too common.) Or they could have some other unknown or emerging disease causing the fatigue.
I think it would be better to get in the habit of saying "depression or some other fatiguing condition" rather than just "depression" when we talk about the problem of using over-broad definitions of ME/CFS.
Those of us who fit the CCC to a tee have a pretty raw deal in the medical world; in a way it's going to get even worse for the people who have ICF - especially once we home in on the causes of "true" ME/CFS. Then the ICF patients will truly be left out in the cold. And we sure wouldn't do them justice if we turn around and give them the same treatment that we've received - assuming they all have a form of "depression" without looking more closely to see if what they have actually fits the clinical description of depression, and to see what else might be going on with their bodies.
We so often critique overly-broad definitions of ME/CFS that sweep up fatigued people without "true," Canadian Consensus-defined ME/CFS, into the same wastebasket with us. Very often we describe this problem this way: "Those (other) people are probably just depressed!"
This doesn't strike me as very fair to people who have Idiopathic Chronic Fatigue - i.e., chronic fatigue (the symptom,) that does not *seem* to be explained by any biomedical findings, but which doesn't fit the CCC either. True, this kind of fatigue could be caused by depression. But it could be caused by lots of other things too.
Perhaps some of those those people who have idiopathic chronic fatigue do have some "recognized" disease or condition that simply hasn't been diagnosed properly - it could be a rare disease, or the right tests haven't been run (which is all too common.) Or they could have some other unknown or emerging disease causing the fatigue.
I think it would be better to get in the habit of saying "depression or some other fatiguing condition" rather than just "depression" when we talk about the problem of using over-broad definitions of ME/CFS.
Those of us who fit the CCC to a tee have a pretty raw deal in the medical world; in a way it's going to get even worse for the people who have ICF - especially once we home in on the causes of "true" ME/CFS. Then the ICF patients will truly be left out in the cold. And we sure wouldn't do them justice if we turn around and give them the same treatment that we've received - assuming they all have a form of "depression" without looking more closely to see if what they have actually fits the clinical description of depression, and to see what else might be going on with their bodies.