May, P G, Donnan, S P, Ashton, J R et al. · Lancet (London, England) · 1980 · DOI
This 1980 study looked at girls at a school where some developed ME/CFS-like illness during an outbreak. Researchers tested all the girls—both sick and healthy—and found that the sick girls tended to be more emotionally sensitive or anxious than the healthy ones. However, viruses weren't consistently found, and the study suggested that doctors may have sometimes labeled different conditions with the same name, making it harder to understand what was really happening.
This study highlights two persistent challenges in ME/CFS research: the difficulty in finding definitive viral causes in outbreaks and the role of psychological and perceptual factors in how the illness is diagnosed and understood. Understanding whether personality differences are part of the disease process or reflect how the condition is recognized has remained central to ME/CFS research for decades.
This study does not prove that personality traits cause ME/CFS or that the condition is primarily psychological in origin. The finding that affected girls showed higher neuroticism could reflect how psychological distress manifests with illness rather than causing it. The study's limitation to one school outbreak and its modest sample size restrict generalizability to broader ME/CFS populations.
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
May, P G, Donnan, S P, Ashton, J R, Ogilvie, M M, & Rolles, C J (1980). Personality and medical perception in benign myalgic encephalomyelitis.. Lancet (London, England). https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(80)92552-0
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-may-1980-personality-medical,
author = {May, P G and Donnan, S P and Ashton, J R and Ogilvie, M M and Rolles, C J},
title = {Personality and medical perception in benign myalgic encephalomyelitis.},
journal = {Lancet (London, England)},
year = {1980},
doi = {10.1016/s0140-6736(80)92552-0},
note = {PubMed: 6107734},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/may-1980-personality-medical},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-28. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/may-1980-personality-medical
Contribute
Private, reviewed by a human. Not a public comment thread.