Lian, Olaug S, Rapport, Frances · Health (London, England : 1997) · 2016 · DOI
This study asked 10 people with ME in Norway to share stories and photos about places where their illness felt better or worse. The researchers found that people with ME carefully balance activity and rest, and they seek out peaceful places (usually home) to recover while avoiding places that drain their energy. The study shows how the physical and emotional qualities of different environments directly affect how people experience and manage their ME.
Understanding how physical and social environments affect ME symptom severity and recovery is crucial for helping patients manage daily life and design supportive home and healthcare spaces. This study privileges patient voice and lived experience, providing insights that quantitative measures alone cannot capture about what makes certain environments tolerable or intolerable for people with ME.
This study does not establish causal mechanisms linking environmental factors to ME pathology, nor does it measure objective symptom changes. The small sample size and qualitative design mean findings cannot be generalized to all ME populations, and the study cannot distinguish between features of places that are truly therapeutic versus those that simply feel subjectively better.
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
Lian, Olaug S & Rapport, Frances (2016). Life according to ME: Caught in the ebb-tide.. Health (London, England : 1997). https://doi.org/10.1177/1363459315622041
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-lian-2016-life-according,
author = {Lian, Olaug S and Rapport, Frances},
title = {Life according to ME: Caught in the ebb-tide.},
journal = {Health (London, England : 1997)},
year = {2016},
doi = {10.1177/1363459315622041},
note = {PubMed: 26755549},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/lian-2016-life-according},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-29. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/lian-2016-life-according
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