Erueti, Chrissy, Glasziou, Paul, Mar, Chris Del et al. · BMC medical education · 2012 · DOI
This study asked medical students whether various health conditions should be classified as a 'disease' or not. Interestingly, when the same condition was given a more medical-sounding name (like 'myalgic encephalomyelitis') versus a simpler name (like 'chronic fatigue syndrome'), students were more likely to call it a disease. This suggests that the words doctors use to describe an illness can influence how seriously it is viewed, even when describing the exact same condition.
For ME/CFS patients, this research demonstrates that how a condition is named and framed linguistically influences whether healthcare providers conceptualize it as a legitimate disease. Since the study directly compared 'myalgic encephalomyelitis' with 'chronic fatigue syndrome'—showing the medical terminology was more likely to be classified as disease—it highlights a potential barrier to patient recognition and appropriate clinical care. Understanding these linguistic and conceptual biases in medical education is crucial for improving how emerging and contested illnesses are understood and managed.
This study does not establish whether medical students' disease classifications actually reflect objective biological reality or correlate with clinical outcomes. It also does not prove that terminology alone causes mismanagement; students' underlying knowledge gaps, training deficits, or prior attitudes may independently influence both terminology preference and disease classification. The cross-sectional design cannot determine causality—whether medical terminology drives disease classification or whether conditions perceived as diseases receive more medical terminology.
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
Erueti, Chrissy, Glasziou, Paul, Mar, Chris Del, & van Driel, Mieke L (2012). Do you think it's a disease? a survey of medical students.. BMC medical education. https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6920-12-19
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-erueti-2012-you-think,
author = {Erueti, Chrissy and Glasziou, Paul and Mar, Chris Del and van Driel, Mieke L},
title = {Do you think it's a disease? a survey of medical students.},
journal = {BMC medical education},
year = {2012},
doi = {10.1186/1472-6920-12-19},
note = {PubMed: 22471875},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/erueti-2012-you-think},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-27. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/erueti-2012-you-think
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