Is There Anything Worse Than Being Accused Of Faking It When You're Feeling Ill?

Is there anything worse than being accused of faking it when you’re feeling ill? Rebecca Newman discovers the reality of psychosomatic illnesses.

- Rebecca Newman

One morning, when I was 15, I ran out of energy as I walked to my class at school. I sank down to rest my face on a frosty path, and couldn’t get back up. I had been ill with glandular fever the previous summer and returned to school a week late, but life was busy: it was the summer of 1995, I was an A-grade student, taking extra subjects and fencing at a national level. There was no time for me to be unwell.

The school nurse thought I was faking it. My GP at home was sympathetic, but suggested I needed rest. I couldn’t understand it: I knew there was something physically wrong with me, but no one could diagnose it or tell me how long it would last. It was frightening and belittling, and it felt unfair. Not only was I unwell, but I was also lost in despair that no one would validate what I was going through. I couldn’t get out of bed and could see a helpless panic in my parents’ faces. The following spring, when my exhaustion had evolved into severe joint pain and photosensitivity, a specialist at last gave my condition a label: post-viral fatigue syndrome (PVFS). People became more understanding, and I could breathe a sigh of relief. There was a medical problem with a name. My inability to get well was legitimate.

PVFS, sometimes known as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) or myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), is far more widely recognised now than it was in the ’90s, but it continues to court controversy. It is, by no means, the only illness involving chronic pain that has no definitive organic cause, but there is an epidemic of suffering out there that is being stigmatised as ‘made up’. Up to one-third of all patients coming to GP surgeries today have symptoms that are medically unexplained*. It is these people whose problems are examined by UK-based neurologist Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan in