ME/CFS Australia (SA) Inc: The ME Association: response to the NICE Guideline on ME/CFS

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The ME Association: response to the NICE Guideline on ME/CFS

Thursday November 23, 2006

The ME Association in the UK has had to fight a battle against a health bureaucracy promoting a psychiatric approach to ME/CFS. This has involved using cognitive behaviour therapy and graded exercise therapy (CBT and GET) as their front-line treatments.

This has been complicated by a very vague definition of the illness, which allows researchers to include almost any chronically fatigued patient in their cohort (and of course, many of those don’t have CFS, and are then “cured” by CBT and GET).

The latest round is this. NICE is the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, “an independent organisation responsible for providing national guidance on promoting good health and preventing and treating ill health” – but while “independent” they have had a remit to prepare these guidelines by April 2007. The rebuttal by The ME Association, posted on their News From The ME Association blog, is fiery and worth a read.