Yamadera, Wataru, Itoh, Hiroshi · Nihon rinsho. Japanese journal of clinical medicine · 2007
This review examines how talking therapies, particularly cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), can help people with ME/CFS. CBT focuses on identifying unhelpful thinking patterns and behaviors—like perfectionism, avoidance, and constantly searching for physical causes—that may be making fatigue worse. The approach involves keeping steady activity levels and making small, planned increases over time, rather than pushing hard and then collapsing.
Understanding psychological approaches to ME/CFS is valuable because many patients experience barriers to care and benefit from integrated treatment strategies. This review helps clarify how CBT can complement rather than replace biomedical investigation, and provides a framework for recognizing behavioral patterns that may perpetuate symptoms.
This review does not prove that ME/CFS is primarily psychiatric in origin—the authors acknowledge it involves documented abnormalities in immune, endocrine, and neurological systems. It does not establish that CBT alone cures ME/CFS or that it works equally well for all patients. The review format prevents determination of effect sizes or identification of which patient subgroups benefit most.
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
Yamadera, Wataru & Itoh, Hiroshi (2007). [Overview of psychiatric therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome].. Nihon rinsho. Japanese journal of clinical medicine. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17561701/
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-yamadera-2007-overview-psychiatric,
author = {Yamadera, Wataru and Itoh, Hiroshi},
title = {[Overview of psychiatric therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome].},
journal = {Nihon rinsho. Japanese journal of clinical medicine},
year = {2007},
note = {PubMed: 17561701},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/yamadera-2007-overview-psychiatric},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-30. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/yamadera-2007-overview-psychiatric
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