Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick

by Maya Dusenbery

Less than one-third of medical schools include ME/CFS in their curriculum, and only 40 percent of medical textbooks mention the condition. Despite this, surveys show that most health care providers are very aware of the disease, but in the absence of good education, their knowledge appears to be largely based on myths. According to a 2011 study by researchers from the CDC, 85 percent of health care providers believe ME/CFS is fully or partly a psychiatric condition. “Many health care providers are skeptical about the seriousness of ME/CFS, mistake it for a mental health condition, or consider it a figment of the patient’s imagination,” the IOM report lamented. “Misconceptions or dismissive attitudes on the part of health care providers make the path to diagnosis long and frustrating for many patients.”