For an illness that affects so many people, doctors are horribly ill-informed and unprepared. Since me/cfs is often a result of a viral infection, the pandemic has only made it worse. You probably know at least one person who has it, and you can get it yourself any time, no matter how healthy you are now.
The diagnosis is pretty strict:
I dont doubt it. I wasnt trying to say that its not a real condition. Im just scared people will treat it like autism or adhd or ocd where you constantly get people, that do not actually have those conditions, using them as excuses for their failures or social issues or whatever.
ME/CFS has quite little social recognition. So people don’t often “pretend” to have it because it’s not on people’s radar’s like ADHD etc is.
The problem though is people often assume lots of “hypochondriacs” have that condition, because the name “chronic fatigue syndrome” doesn’t sound very serious, (nearly all patients prefer calling it ME or ME/CFS) but that stereotype basically means people with the condition are constantly accused of faking and stuff and it’s just a horrible all round situation.