Richman J A, Jason L A, Taylor R R, Jahn S C
Department of Psychiatry, University of Illinois, Chicago 60612, USA.
Health Care Women Int. 2000 Apr-May;21(3):173-85. doi: 10.1080/073993300245249.
We contrast Western medical views of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) etiology, diagnosis, and treatment with views maintained by a predominantly female CFS population. We argue that the failure of Western medicine to demonstrate a viral etiology for CFS led to a paradigmatic shift in research perspectives, which then embraced psychiatric and sociocultural explanations for CFS. As a result, CFS was delegitimized as a biomedical phenomenon within medical, academic, governmental, and public arenas. We compare alternative social constructions of CFS with issues pertaining to multiple sclerosis (MS), an illness that similarly predominates among women. Patient perspectives suggest that the history of medical attitudes toward CFS may eventually parallel the transformations that occurred in relation to MS. In particular, the discovery of biological markers for CFS may lay to rest the categorization of CFS as largely within the psychiatric realm.
我们将西方医学对慢性疲劳综合征（CFS）病因、诊断和治疗的观点与以女性为主的CFS患者群体所持的观点进行对比。我们认为，西医未能证明CFS的病毒病因，导致了研究视角的范式转变，随后开始接受对CFS的精神病学和社会文化解释。结果，在医学、学术、政府和公共领域，CFS作为一种生物医学现象的合理性被否定。我们将CFS的另类社会建构与多发性硬化症（MS）相关问题进行比较，MS也是一种在女性中同样高发的疾病。患者的观点表明，医学对CFS态度的历史最终可能与MS所发生的转变相似。特别是，CFS生物学标志物的发现可能会消除将CFS主要归类于精神病学领域的情况。
