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“When people with ME/CFS report symptoms of post-exertional malaise, those symptoms are independent of emotional distress, but when the general population report what they think are post-exertional malaise symptoms, their symptoms of post-exertional malaise are significantly related to emotional distress. It is possible that because healthy individuals experience a relationship between emotional distress and post-exertional malaise, they might believe that these two domains are connected for themselves and by inference with patients with ME/CFS, when in fact it is not the case. This ultimately might blur the ability of healthy controls to understand the experience of post-extertional malaise for people with ME/CFS.” — Leonard A. Jason
When people with ME/CFS report symptoms of post-exertional malaise, those symptoms are independent of emotional distress, but when the general population report what they think are post-exertional malaise symptoms, their symptoms of post-exertional malaise are significantly related to emotional distress. It is possible that because healthy individuals experience a relationship between emotional distress and post-exertional malaise, they might believe that these two domains are connected for themselves and by inference with patients with ME/CFS, when in fact it is not the case. This ultimately might blur the ability of healthy controls to understand the experience of post-extertional malaise for people with ME/CFS.