Your story “The bully hangover” (Health & Family, April 14) quotes a child psychiatrist who states that chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) may be an effect of long-term bullying and that CFS is “almost without exception a somatic representation of depression.”
This mistaken view has long plagued people with CFS. CFS is, in fact, a profound dysregulation of the neurological, endocrine and immune systems. Symptoms can include erratic blood pressure and heart rate, debilitating muscle weakness, extreme disabling fatigue and flu-like symptoms such as fever and headache. CFS is not caused by depression.
Unfortunately there still exists a group of medical professionals and lay people who today make the same mistake about CFS that their predecessors made about multiple sclerosis, tuberculosis and cancer. These illnesses were also once thought to be caused by psychological issues. Of course, now we know better.
