Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) can sometimes lead to an identity crisis so severe it is akin to dying. That’s one message derived from comments made by fourteen people with the condition who were interviewed in-depth by health psychologists in Scotland in 2008.
Using a qualitative technique called interpretative phenomenological analysis (pdf), Adele Dickson and colleagues identified three themes in the accounts of what it is like to live with CFS: “Identity crisis: agency and embodiment”; “Scepticism and the self”; and “Acceptance, adjustment and coping.”
The people with CFS said that the condition has stripped them of their identities and left them feeling detached from their minds and bodies. “The frequent use of the language of bereavement is suggestive of processes of mourning and even perhaps the death of anticipated self,” the researchers said.
Adele Dickson and her co-workers concluded that there was an urgent need for health psychology to respond to the increasing prevalence of chronic health conditions such as CFS in Western Society. Health psychology needs to truly embrace a biopsychosocial model of illness, they said, and to conduct longitudinal qualitative research “to fully understand the processes underlying adaptation to illness.”
