Beasant, Lucy, Mills, Nicola, Crawley, Esther · Primary health care research & development · 2014 · DOI
This study asked 13 mothers and 12 teenagers with ME/CFS about their experiences getting help from a specialist ME/CFS service. Most families found it difficult and took a long time to access the specialist clinic, but once they got there, both teenagers and mothers felt it was valuable. The specialist service helped confirm the diagnosis, improved symptom management, and helped communication between doctors and schools.
Understanding patient and family perspectives on specialist care is crucial for improving ME/CFS diagnosis and management pathways. This study reveals that despite barriers, adolescents and families highly value specialist services, supporting current guidance and indicating that improving access to specialist care should be a priority in healthcare systems.
This qualitative study does not prove that specialist referral improves clinical outcomes or long-term prognosis, only that patients perceive value in the service. The study cannot establish whether specialist services are more effective than other interventions, and it does not address whether the treatment approaches used were evidence-based or optimal.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
The first block is for the primary paper and is the citation you should use in research work. The atlas-snapshot line only applies if you are specifically referring to this atlas’s reading of the paper on the date shown.
Primary citation
Beasant, Lucy, Mills, Nicola, & Crawley, Esther (2014). Adolescents and mothers value referral to a specialist service for chronic fatigue syndrome or myalgic encephalopathy (CFS/ME).. Primary health care research & development. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1463423613000121
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-beasant-2014-adolescents-mothers,
author = {Beasant, Lucy and Mills, Nicola and Crawley, Esther},
title = {Adolescents and mothers value referral to a specialist service for chronic fatigue syndrome or myalgic encephalopathy (CFS/ME).},
journal = {Primary health care research & development},
year = {2014},
doi = {10.1017/S1463423613000121},
note = {PubMed: 23731646},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/beasant-2014-adolescents-mothers},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-30. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/beasant-2014-adolescents-mothers
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