Boulazreg, Samir, Rokach, Ami · Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020 · DOI
This study examines how ME/CFS affects people's emotional and social well-being, focusing particularly on loneliness. The researchers reviewed existing research to understand how ME/CFS creates isolation for patients during their teenage and adult years, and how it also impacts family members and healthcare workers. The study brings together information about loneliness and chronic illness to help explain why ME/CFS can feel so isolating and offers some strategies that might help people cope with these feelings.
This study fills an important gap by systematically examining the emotional and social consequences of ME/CFS, which are often overlooked in biomedical research. Understanding loneliness as a key psychosocial stressor may help clinicians, patients, and families develop better support strategies and validate the emotional burden of living with this illness.
This narrative review does not establish causal relationships between ME/CFS and loneliness through empirical data collection, nor does it quantify how many ME/CFS patients experience loneliness. It also does not compare loneliness levels in ME/CFS to other chronic conditions or provide interventional evidence that specific coping strategies reduce loneliness.
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 →
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Primary citation
Boulazreg, Samir & Rokach, Ami (2020). The Lonely, Isolating, and Alienating Implications of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.. Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland). https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare8040413
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-boulazreg-2020-lonely-isolating,
author = {Boulazreg, Samir and Rokach, Ami},
title = {The Lonely, Isolating, and Alienating Implications of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.},
journal = {Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland)},
year = {2020},
doi = {10.3390/healthcare8040413},
note = {PubMed: 33092097},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/boulazreg-2020-lonely-isolating},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-28. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/boulazreg-2020-lonely-isolating
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