Maybe it is time to stop changing the labels and start changing the attitudes to psychological illness instead.

And of course ME/CFS and psychosomatic disorders are linked by the same overarching question: are they real? Ask the 250,000 ME/CFS sufferers in the UK that question. Their lives are devastated by this illness. The reality of how life-destroying this problem is cannot be argued with. The question that we, the unaffected, must answer for ourselves

When relationships break down some get angry, some deny and some quickly try to replace what they have lost. Losing a grasp on the physical illness you thought you had can be every bit as devastating as any other sort of loss and, for some, a quick substitute is necessary. It is a little bit like an addiction. In giving up an addiction some addicts

In the 1990s I saw many patients who were convinced that their miscellaneous physical symptoms were due to candidiasis. Popular magazines and newspapers were publicising a candida epidemic at the time. One website described the symptoms of candidiasis as a feeling of being run-down, irritability accompanied by bloating, itchy ears, poor

A Norwegian study asked over 900 consecutive patients at a GP practice if they thought they suffered with any of the following: amalgam poisoning, irritable bowel syndrome, candida syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, electromagnetic poisoning or food intolerance. Each of these diagnoses is considered either entirely medically

The autonomic nervous system is in command of our internal organs, it alters the movement of our bowels, empties our bladders, regulates our sweat glands, changes the size of our pupils, constricts and dilates blood vessels, slows and speeds the heart. In turn, the autonomic nervous system can be subdivided. The sympathetic nerves determine how we

On the face of it, women turn their distress inward and men turn it outward.

I will not be obtuse. I believe that psychological factors and behavioural issues, if they are not the entire cause, at the very least contribute in a significant way to prolonging the disability that occurs in chronic fatigue syndrome. Do I know that for sure? No, nobody does; but I am influenced by the lack of evidence for an organic disease.

Neurasthenia, hysteria, melancholia, depression, chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome, myalgic encephalomyelitis, yuppie flu: all these labels impact upon how a patient receives their diagnosis, how they move forward and also how they are received by the world. If you have been housebound for a year, have lost your