Ray, C, Weir, W, Stewart, D et al. · Social science & medicine (1982) · 1993 · DOI
Researchers created a questionnaire to understand how people with ME/CFS cope with their illness and manage day-to-day life. They found that patients use four main coping strategies: trying to stay active, adjusting to the illness, focusing on symptoms, and seeking information. These coping approaches were linked to how well patients functioned and their levels of anxiety and depression.
This study provides the first disease-specific tool for measuring how ME/CFS patients cope with their condition, allowing researchers to better understand the relationship between coping strategies and patient outcomes. Understanding what coping approaches are most helpful—or harmful—can inform psychological interventions and patient education programs tailored to ME/CFS.
This study does not establish which coping strategies are most effective for improving outcomes or which strategies should be recommended clinically. The correlational design cannot determine whether certain coping styles cause better or worse outcomes, or whether they are merely markers of baseline disease severity or personality traits.
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
Ray, C, Weir, W, Stewart, D, Miller, P, & Hyde, G (1993). Ways of coping with chronic fatigue syndrome: development of an illness management questionnaire.. Social science & medicine (1982). https://doi.org/10.1016/0277-9536(93)90268-9
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-ray-1993-ways-coping,
author = {Ray, C and Weir, W and Stewart, D and Miller, P and Hyde, G},
title = {Ways of coping with chronic fatigue syndrome: development of an illness management questionnaire.},
journal = {Social science & medicine (1982)},
year = {1993},
doi = {10.1016/0277-9536(93)90268-9},
note = {PubMed: 8356486},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/ray-1993-ways-coping},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-28. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/ray-1993-ways-coping
Contribute
Private, reviewed by a human. Not a public comment thread.