Do you think it’s a disease? A survey of medical students. Erueti C, Glasziou P, Del Mar C, Van Driel ML.
Almost 200 medical students at Bond University in Australia were polled as to whether chronic fatigue syndrome is a disease or not. (Disease: “an unhealthy state of body or mind: a disorder, illness or ailment with distinctive symptoms, caused eg by infection”)
Surprisingly 75% of them thought it was a disease. That was in contrast to a study which found that 21% of doctors thought ME/CFS was all in the patients head, 29% who weren’t sure and 50% who disagreed with that statement. Interestingly, the authors noted that 30 years ago there was controversy over whether depression was a disease. Maybe the next group of physicians and researchers will be a bit more enlightened than than the last.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22471875