Knight, Sarah Jenette, Politis, Jennifer, Garnham, Christine et al. · Frontiers in pediatrics · 2018 · DOI
This study looked at how ME/CFS affects teenagers' school lives by comparing 39 adolescents with ME/CFS to 28 healthy peers. Researchers found that teens with ME/CFS missed more school, felt less connected to school, participated less in school activities, and had lower academic performance. The severity of fatigue and emotional symptoms were linked to these school difficulties.
Most discussions of ME/CFS and school focus only on absenteeism, but this study reveals that the impact on adolescents' schooling is far broader—including feeling disconnected from school and academic underperformance. Understanding these multiple dimensions of school dysfunction is essential for developing comprehensive support strategies and educational accommodations for affected teenagers.
This study cannot establish whether fatigue and emotional symptoms directly cause poor school functioning or vice versa. The cross-sectional design captures a single point in time and cannot determine whether these school difficulties persist, improve, or worsen over time. The study also cannot identify which specific interventions would improve school outcomes.
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
Knight, Sarah Jenette, Politis, Jennifer, Garnham, Christine, Scheinberg, Adam, & Tollit, Michelle Anne (2018). School Functioning in Adolescents With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.. Frontiers in pediatrics. https://doi.org/10.3389/fped.2018.00302
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-knight-2018-school-functioning,
author = {Knight, Sarah Jenette and Politis, Jennifer and Garnham, Christine and Scheinberg, Adam and Tollit, Michelle Anne},
title = {School Functioning in Adolescents With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.},
journal = {Frontiers in pediatrics},
year = {2018},
doi = {10.3389/fped.2018.00302},
note = {PubMed: 30460211},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/knight-2018-school-functioning},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-26. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/knight-2018-school-functioning
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