Rogers, Denise C, Dittner, Antonia J, Rimes, Katharine A et al. · The British journal of clinical psychology · 2017 · DOI
This study looked at fatigue in adults with ADHD and compared it to fatigue in people with ME/CFS and healthy people. Researchers found that adults with ADHD experience significantly more fatigue than healthy controls, with about 62% meeting criteria for clinically significant fatigue. Importantly, they discovered that people with ME/CFS and people with ADHD share many similar challenges, including low mood, anxiety, and reduced confidence in their abilities.
This study highlights an important overlap between ADHD and ME/CFS that has been understudied, suggesting that treatment approaches developed for one condition may be adapted for the other. Understanding shared clinical characteristics (mood, anxiety, self-efficacy) could improve diagnostic accuracy and open new avenues for intervention development. The finding that fatigue is highly prevalent in ADHD legitimizes fatigue as a core feature worthy of clinical attention in this population.
This cross-sectional design cannot establish causality or determine whether ADHD and fatigue are related through direct mechanisms or merely co-occur. The study does not prove that the same underlying biological or psychological processes drive fatigue in both ADHD and ME/CFS, only that they share similar secondary symptoms. It also does not establish whether treating ADHD-related fatigue with CFS-specific interventions would be effective in practice.
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
Rogers, Denise C, Dittner, Antonia J, Rimes, Katharine A, & Chalder, Trudie (2017). Fatigue in an adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder population: A trans-diagnostic approach.. The British journal of clinical psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjc.12119
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-rogers-2017-fatigue-adult,
author = {Rogers, Denise C and Dittner, Antonia J and Rimes, Katharine A and Chalder, Trudie},
title = {Fatigue in an adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder population: A trans-diagnostic approach.},
journal = {The British journal of clinical psychology},
year = {2017},
doi = {10.1111/bjc.12119},
note = {PubMed: 27918087},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/rogers-2017-fatigue-adult},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-28. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/rogers-2017-fatigue-adult
Contribute
Private, reviewed by a human. Not a public comment thread.