Top Document: FAQ: CFS FAQ Previous Document: 2.10 Do people die from CFS? Next Document: 2.12 Is CFS related to AIDS? See reader questions & answers on this topic! - Help others by sharing your knowledge Many emerging illnesses, before they have gained acceptance by the medical community, have initially been discounted as being hysteria, depression, so= matoform disorders, etc. One hundred years ago, polio was dismissed in just that fas= hion. When CFS gained notice in recent times, many of its symptoms were correlated to depression, and many un-read physicians today still believe that's what CFS= is. Much recent research, notably the finding by Demitrack that cortisol levels are = low in CFS patients whereas in depressed people they are high, indicates that CFS is n= ot depression. Other noted differences are that CFS patients tend to overestim= ate their abilities, retain a strong interest in life, and respond poorly to exercise= , whereas the opposite are typically observed in people who are depressed. A politico-economic aspect of this issue is that health insurers have an in= centive to classify patients as having temporary illnesses that can be treated cheaply= and in a short time. Depression is considered to be a short-term, treatable illness. Another issue is that CFS patients can get "secondary depression" if their = lives have been disrupted because their illness has interfered with their job or their= social or family life. This indirect consequence of the illness may be taken by some medical professionals as indicating a cause rather than an effect of the observed s= ymptoms. See also question 2.04 above, regarding stress and psychology. Also, the di= fferences between CFS and other conditions, including depression, is discussed in the= Calabrese article. (See Appendix 2 about how to get this article's text by e-mail.) User Contributions:Top Document: FAQ: CFS FAQ Previous Document: 2.10 Do people die from CFS? Next Document: 2.12 Is CFS related to AIDS? Single Page [ Usenet FAQs | Web FAQs | Documents | RFC Index ] Send corrections/additions to the FAQ Maintainer: CFS-L-REQUEST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU
Last Update March 27 2014 @ 02:11 PM
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