Hasan, Zara, Kuyvenhoven, Cassandra, Chowdhury, Mehreen et al. · Journal of evaluation in clinical practice · 2024 · DOI
This study interviewed 33 ME/CFS patients who reported getting better, including 7 who recovered completely and 26 who improved significantly. Most patients had to figure out their own treatments without much help from doctors, often because they felt dismissed or stigmatized by healthcare providers. Patients who fully recovered most often credited mind-body approaches like meditation or cognitive therapy for their improvement.
This study documents the real-world experiences of ME/CFS patients navigating treatment without adequate medical support, revealing a critical gap between patient needs and healthcare system capacity. Understanding what patients perceive as helpful—particularly mind-body approaches in full recovery cases—can inform more patient-centered clinical approaches. The findings highlight how stigma and dismissal drive patients away from conventional medicine, emphasizing the need for more supportive, evidence-informed care models.
This study does not prove that mind-body approaches directly cause ME/CFS recovery, as it relies on patient retrospective perception rather than controlled trials or objective measures. Selection bias toward patients who improved limits generalizability—the findings may not reflect outcomes in patients with persistent severe ME/CFS. The study cannot establish causation between clinical dismissal and treatment choices; these are observed correlations in a patient-selected sample.
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
Hasan, Zara, Kuyvenhoven, Cassandra, Chowdhury, Mehreen, Amoudi, Lana, Zeraatkar, Dena, Busse, Jason W, et al. (2024). Patient perspectives of recovery from myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome: An interpretive description study.. Journal of evaluation in clinical practice. https://doi.org/10.1111/jep.13938
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-hasan-2024-patient-perspectives,
author = {Hasan, Zara and Kuyvenhoven, Cassandra and Chowdhury, Mehreen and Amoudi, Lana and Zeraatkar, Dena and Busse, Jason W and Sadik, Marina and Vanstone, Meredith},
title = {Patient perspectives of recovery from myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome: An interpretive description study.},
journal = {Journal of evaluation in clinical practice},
year = {2024},
doi = {10.1111/jep.13938},
note = {PubMed: 37927138},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/hasan-2024-patient-perspectives},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-30. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/hasan-2024-patient-perspectives
Contribute
Private, reviewed by a human. Not a public comment thread.