Stoll, Sarah Victoria Ellen, Crawley, Esther, Richards, Victoria et al. · BMJ open · 2017 · DOI
Many children with ME/CFS experience anxiety alongside their fatigue symptoms. This review looked at nine studies to find out which treatments help reduce anxiety in children with ME/CFS. While a few treatments showed some promise—particularly therapy approaches like cognitive behavioural therapy and one immune treatment—the evidence is limited and no treatment was specifically designed to target anxiety in this group.
Anxiety comorbidity is common in pediatric ME/CFS and may complicate management, yet no evidence-based anxiety treatment guidelines exist for this population. This systematic review highlights a critical evidence gap and demonstrates the need for targeted research on anxiety interventions in children with ME/CFS, potentially informing clinical practice standards.
This review does not establish which anxiety treatments are actually most effective for children with ME/CFS, as no study was specifically designed to test anxiety interventions in this population. It does not determine whether anxiety severity influences overall ME/CFS outcomes or whether standard anxiety treatments are equally effective in children with ME/CFS compared to other pediatric populations. The improvements observed were secondary outcomes and may not reflect causal treatment effects.
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
Stoll, Sarah Victoria Ellen, Crawley, Esther, Richards, Victoria, Lal, Nishita, Brigden, Amberly, & Loades, Maria E (2017). What treatments work for anxiety in children with chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME)? Systematic review.. BMJ open. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2016-015481
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-stoll-2017-what-treatments,
author = {Stoll, Sarah Victoria Ellen and Crawley, Esther and Richards, Victoria and Lal, Nishita and Brigden, Amberly and Loades, Maria E},
title = {What treatments work for anxiety in children with chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME)? Systematic review.},
journal = {BMJ open},
year = {2017},
doi = {10.1136/bmjopen-2016-015481},
note = {PubMed: 28877941},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/stoll-2017-what-treatments},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-29. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/stoll-2017-what-treatments
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