Fernie, Bruce A, Maher-Edwards, Lorraine, Murphy, Gabrielle et al. · Clinical psychology & psychotherapy · 2015 · DOI
Researchers created a new questionnaire called the MaSCS to measure how people with ME/CFS think about their symptoms—specifically, how much they focus on symptoms and what they believe about controlling them. They tested this questionnaire with 124 ME/CFS patients and found it reliably measured two types of thinking: positive beliefs about symptom control and negative beliefs about symptom control. Both types of thinking were linked to how severe fatigue was, even when accounting for anxiety and depression.
Understanding how ME/CFS patients think about and focus on their symptoms may help explain why symptoms persist and worsen. This validated questionnaire could help clinicians better assess individual patients and may guide development of cognitive-behavioral treatments tailored to address unhelpful thought patterns in ME/CFS.
This study establishes correlation between metacognitions and fatigue severity, not causation—it does not prove that changing these thoughts will reduce symptoms. The cross-sectional design cannot determine whether negative metacognitions cause worse fatigue or result from it. Findings are preliminary and require replication in larger, more diverse samples before clinical implementation.
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
Fernie, Bruce A, Maher-Edwards, Lorraine, Murphy, Gabrielle, Nikčević, Ana V, & Spada, Marcantonio M (2015). The Metacognitions about Symptoms Control Scale: Development and Concurrent Validity.. Clinical psychology & psychotherapy. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpp.1906
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-fernie-2015-metacognitions-about,
author = {Fernie, Bruce A and Maher-Edwards, Lorraine and Murphy, Gabrielle and Nikčević, Ana V and Spada, Marcantonio M},
title = {The Metacognitions about Symptoms Control Scale: Development and Concurrent Validity.},
journal = {Clinical psychology & psychotherapy},
year = {2015},
doi = {10.1002/cpp.1906},
note = {PubMed: 24899521},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/fernie-2015-metacognitions-about},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-27. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/fernie-2015-metacognitions-about
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