Van Den Houte, Maaike, Bogaerts, Katleen, Van Diest, Ilse et al. · Psychosomatic medicine · 2017 · DOI
This study looked at whether negative emotions can trigger or worsen physical symptoms in people with ME/CFS and fibromyalgia. Researchers showed patients and healthy people emotionally negative, neutral, and positive pictures, then asked them to report what physical symptoms they felt. Patients with ME/CFS and fibromyalgia reported more symptoms after viewing negative pictures, while healthy people did not. The effect was stronger in patients who had difficulty recognizing their own feelings or who became deeply absorbed in things.
Understanding how emotional states influence symptom perception in ME/CFS is important because it helps explain symptom variability and identifies which patients may benefit from emotion-focused interventions. The finding that difficulty identifying feelings moderates this effect suggests that targeted emotional awareness training could be a therapeutic avenue. This research contributes to understanding the brain-symptom relationship in ME/CFS without suggesting symptoms are 'all in the head.'
This study does not prove that ME/CFS symptoms are primarily caused by emotions or negative thinking. It shows a correlation between induced negative affect and reported symptoms in a laboratory setting, which may not reflect real-world disease mechanisms. The study cannot determine whether this emotional-symptom relationship reflects genuine pathophysiology, altered perception, or both, and the findings in healthy controls' lack of response suggest ME/CFS patients may have distinct biological vulnerability to this effect.
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
Van Den Houte, Maaike, Bogaerts, Katleen, Van Diest, Ilse, De Bie, Jozef, Persoons, Philippe, Van Oudenhove, Lukas, et al. (2017). Inducing Somatic Symptoms in Functional Syndrome Patients: Effects of Manipulating State Negative Affect.. Psychosomatic medicine. https://doi.org/10.1097/PSY.0000000000000527
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-van-den-houte-2017-inducing-somatic,
author = {Van Den Houte, Maaike and Bogaerts, Katleen and Van Diest, Ilse and De Bie, Jozef and Persoons, Philippe and Van Oudenhove, Lukas and Van den Bergh, Omer},
title = {Inducing Somatic Symptoms in Functional Syndrome Patients: Effects of Manipulating State Negative Affect.},
journal = {Psychosomatic medicine},
year = {2017},
doi = {10.1097/PSY.0000000000000527},
note = {PubMed: 28914723},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/van-den-houte-2017-inducing-somatic},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-28. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/van-den-houte-2017-inducing-somatic
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