Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) two-year observation study: 36.5% suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome

For what it's worth:

http://www.koreabiomed.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=1731

 

They seem to be treating it as a mental disorder!

 

Yes, it is rather confused. I was especially curious about this:

I just can't believe the incidence of genuine PTSD could be all that high. Being severely ill - possibly at risk of death - is undoubtedly traumatic. But I think it would only rarely lead to the type of distressing re-experiencing of the event that is required for a PTSD diagnosis.

I've been concerned lately about the ever widening remit of PTSD. While I don't doubt the validity of trauma (the idea that one or more deeply traumatic events can cause very serious ongoing distress), the criteria for PTSD have been broadened so widely lately that all you need to show is one or more unpleasant or distressing events in your life some time prior to your complaints. Now with the introduction of complex PTSD, those events can occur over an extended period, and can be anything from childhood poverty to having parents that put you down. By this definition, there can't be a lot of people that wouldn't qualify.

Again, its not that I don't think past traumatic events - or even sequences of events - can't lead to serious ongoing distress in some people. Its just that the concept has become too broad and overused.

On other fora, I've read about physically ill people eager to be diagnosed with PTSD, or alternatively, triumphant they have obtained the diagnosis. Often, what they are looking for is validation that the way they have been treated by the medical profession or by their families has been traumatic. They don't realise that PTSD goes on their record as a psychiatric disorder, and is seen as a problem they have to address, not the perpetrator of the trauma. Most mental health professionals think complex PTSD is closely linked to somatization, and many see it as overlapping with borderline personality disorder.

By all means, let's be mad as hell at our mistreatment. But let's keep the concept of PTSD for what it was intended - the unwanted re-experiencing of deeply disturbing past events that inferes with our everyday functioning.