Why so little focus on Functional Disability and so much focus on “Symptoms”?

When they discover the pathophysiology/physiopathology of delayed PEM then we can call it what it is. I can't say the term ME describes what I have either.

 

My point wasn’t specifically about the name ME, more about the fact the Oxford criteria doesn’t have PEM.

 

Random but related

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/11/goldman-asks-is-curing-patients-a-sustainable-business-model.html

(this is from 2018)

 

I think the article about Goldman Sachs above was triggered by a company (that I can't remember the name of) advertising their successful cure of Hepatitis C. I'm sure I've read that it might be possible to eliminate Hepatitis C in the near future as a result, and that numbers of sufferers have already dramatically reduced.

I haven't read this thread because I'm always dubious about the word "Functional" (in the title) and what the person using it means by it. Doctors and patients don't seem to mean the same thing by the word.

In my kitchen I have a fridge. It works. It is functional.

In my body I have a heart which is still beating. It works. It is functional.

But if I reported a pain that a doctor couldn't find an obvious cause for they would tell me that was functional and they would mean that the problem is a psychological/mental one, not caused by anything physical. And they are unlikely to explain to me, the patient, what they mean by a symptom being functional. If they wrote a prescription for anything it would most likely be one for anti-depressants.

I'm basing my comments on my experience of being in that situation in the 1990s when a severe pain I had was described as "functional". There was no treatment offered of any kind. Luckily for me I had surgery which found and fixed the cause about 5 or 6 years later, accidentally. (The surgeon was looking for something else which he didn't find.)

So what is a "functional disability" in the sense it is used in the title of this thread?