Patterns of control beliefs in chronic fatigue syndrome: results of a population-based survey

Abstract

BackgroundChronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) represents a unique clinical challenge for patients and health care providers due to unclear etiology and lack of specific treatment. Characteristic patterns of behavior and cognitions might be related to how CFS patients respond to management strategies.MethodsThis study investigates control beliefs in a population-based sample of 113 CFS patients, 264 individuals with insufficient symptoms or fatigue for CFS diagnosis (ISF), and 124 well individuals.ResultsControlling for personality and coping, individuals with low confidence in their problem-solving capacity were almost 8 times more likely to be classified as ISF and 5 times more likely to be classified as CFS compared to being classified as well. However there was a wide distribution within groups and individuals with “low confidence” scores were found in 31.7% of Well individuals. Individuals with low levels of anxiety and who were more outgoing were less likely to be classified as ISF or CFS.ConclusionsThese findings suggest that fostering control beliefs could be an important focus for developing behavioral management strategies in CFS and other chronic conditions.

Chronic fatigue syndrome prevalence is grossly overestimated using Oxford criteria compared to Centers for Disease Control (Fukuda) criteria in a U.S. population study

“…It offers the additional advantage of assigning subjects to CIF and CFS-Like diagnostic categories. Prevalence rates for groups with insufficient fatigue (CFS-Like) and sufficient fatigue but insufficient ancillary findings (CIF) have not been delineated as they are generally pooled together into an “insufficient fatigue” group (prevalence ~0.74%) [32,18,19]. Diagnosis is challenging because almost half of CFS and “insufficient fatigue” patients have at least one non-exclusionary comorbid condition [32].…”

“…CFS-Like subjects had no or minimal fatigue but substantial complaints on CFS ancillary criteria [17]. CIF and CFS-Like individuals have been lumped together as a category of “unwell subjects with insufficient symptoms for CFS,” [18,19] but this does not facilitate investigations of those with fatigue alone compared to those with increased symptoms without fatigue.…”

Implications of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy in Changing Illness Representations

“…Scientific literature has underscored the need to carry out studies researching the efficiency of interventions meant to alter illness representations (Parfeni et al, 2013;De Gucht, 2015;Ashur et al, 2015;Doerr et al, 2017), and such studies have already been published.…”

“…Cognitivebehavioural therapy is a proper approach for the intervention on illness perception, because it increases people's understanding of the relationship between body and mind and of the way in which this connection influences the evolution of illness, thus integrating information from the biological, psychological and social sphere (Pinto et al, 2017;De Gucht, 2015). This type of therapy improves perceived control of illness management, increases coherence about illness and it allows a more accurate identification of illness consequences (van Erp et al, 2017;Doerr, Jopp, Chajewski, & Naster, 2017;Scheenen et al, 2017); more precisely, it has effects on the contents of illness representation dimensions. By approaching the dysfunctional ruminations about illness, we may obtain significant progresses in treating depression in case of patients with certain chronic conditions (Julien, Rimes, & Brown., 2016).…”

Specifics of chronic fatigue syndrome coping strategies identified in a French flash survey during the COVID‐19 containment

“…They are discussed in the context of pain and illness management, relationship with fatigue severity and functional impairment and their results may be contradictory (Ray et al, 1995). For instance, results of a population-based survey suggest that coping style differed between ME/CFS patients and healthy people, with higher confrontative coping, responsibility taking and escape avoidance in the CFS group (Doerr et al, 2017).…”