Daniels, Jo, Parker, Hannah, Salkovskis, Paul Martin · International journal of clinical and health psychology : IJCHP · 2020 · DOI
This study found that about 42% of people with ME/CFS also experience significant health anxiety—excessive worry about their health and symptoms. When people have both ME/CFS and health anxiety together, they tend to report worse fatigue and more difficulty with physical activities. The researchers tested whether cognitive behavioral therapy (a type of talking therapy) could help reduce health anxiety in ME/CFS patients, and found it produced meaningful improvements.
This research highlights that health anxiety is a treatable co-occurring condition in nearly half of ME/CFS patients and may substantially worsen disability. Identifying health anxiety as a modifiable treatment target offers hope for symptom improvement and better quality of life, while also suggesting that comprehensive ME/CFS care should screen for and address anxiety symptoms alongside medical management.
This study does not prove that health anxiety causes ME/CFS or that reducing anxiety will cure the underlying disease. The cross-sectional design means we cannot determine causality—health anxiety and worse symptoms could mutually reinforce each other, or severe symptoms could naturally lead to anxiety. The small case-series treatment study requires replication in larger, controlled trials before firm conclusions about CBT effectiveness can be established.
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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