Round up of articles spotted online in March/April 2025 that focus on the experiences of people with ‘psychologised’ or hard to diagnose health conditions.
For Some Women With Serious Physical Ailments, Mental Illness Has Become a Scapegoat Diagnosis
by Shreyas Teegala and Simar Bajaj in Smithsonian Magazine
Patients with difficult-to-diagnose conditions like endometriosis are often sent home with diagnoses like anxiety or bipolar disorder. This excellent article explores the impact of this on patients and features several patient voices.
One woman, Jessica Wetzstein ‘…experienced severe pain almost her entire life, but when countless specialists couldn’t pinpoint a physical cause, they instead diagnosed her with depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder.
These labels followed her from doctor to doctor, each seeing her medical record and previous diagnoses of mental illness before Wetzstein uttered a single word. The diagnoses cast a shadow over her symptoms and “got me written off immediately,” Wetzstein says. “The second I said anything, it was, ‘You have anxiety, you have hypochondria.’”
From the Smithsonian Magazine
“I would love to say it’s the fatigue but honestly it’s not”: Into Adulthood with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis
by A Tenhave, R Bognar and A Sidis in Psychology Health and Medicine
This article, written by psychologists in Australia who understand ME/CFS as a physical health condition, examines the impact of moving from adolescence into adulthood with this condition. Given the limitations this illness places on young people, how can they develop independence and an adult identity? And how can mental health professionals support them?
The article used semi-structured interviews with young people to explore their experiences. It highlights issues faced by these young people when their path to adulthood diverged from the ‘norms’ of healthy adolescents.
Common milestones, such as finishing school at 18 years old, obtaining a drivers’ licence, dating or moving out of the family home (i.e. living independently), felt either unachievable or delayed.
“Seeing all of your peers you know, finish their education, get like 9 to 5 jobs, travelling around the world. Some people are getting like married and buying houses and having kids and stuff like that. And I, I know it can be very upsetting seeing everyone else kind of hit all these milestones while you’re kind of stuck.” Participant 3
Other participants described a struggle to follow the expectations of adulthood and felt excluded from this developmental stage.
“Everyone’s expecting you to be an adult and the other side is that you don’t know how to be. The way that people have shown you to be an adult is inaccessible.” Participant 2
This quote suggests that achieving independence through typical means, as seen by entering adulthood, may be less viable for those with CFS/ME. Indeed, this encourages the notion that while independence may be achieved, it may look different for those with CFS/ME.
From Tenhave, Bognar and Sidis in Psychology Health and Medicine
The article covers various areas of relevance to many with this condition, but particularly young people:
- Finding a voice: learning to say no and ask for what I need
- Navigating individuation while depending on others
- Identity: who could I have been?
- Lack of confidence and harmful interactions
- Isolation and disconnection: being with people but not being like them
- Emotional isolation and loneliness
As well as the negatives and difficulties, the authors recognise the strength, ingenuity and creativity of young people with ME/CFS as they face these challenges.
Participants shared several aspects of their experience which provided comfort or determination. These included family and friends to remaining present in the moment and accepting what is in one’s control to maintaining connection with values.
Throughout the interview process, participants described gaining a hard-won clarity of their values and a sense of personal growth. This is consistent with the theory of post-traumatic growth whereby individuals experience increased understanding of themselves and their world following adversity.
From Tenhave, Bognar and Sidis in Psychology Health and Medicine
The discussion of the survey results explores all these issues in detail – it’s worth a read for anyone working with adolescents and young adults, or indeed with older adults who have gone through their teenage years with chronic illness.
It’s a fantastic article which can’t be recommended enough. This is the kind of emotional support and insight that is required: it’s heartening and exciting to see therapists, psychologists and researchers looking at the issues that really help people with ME/CFS rather than engaging in gaslighting.
On a personal note – as a person who got ill as a teenager I felt very seen by this article.
Physiology for Psychology
by Emily Cochrane on the British Psychological Society website
Great article by Emily Cochrane of POTSUK on how this physiological condition gets misinterpreted and treated as ‘anxiety’ – advice on how to spot the difference. Emily is a clinical physiologist with a specialist interest in Postural Tachycardia Syndrome (PoTS), hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), persistent pain, fatigue, Autism, and ADHD.
This article covers:
- Understanding PoTS physiology
- PoTS vs. anxiety
- PoTS for the Clinician
Anxiety is a mental health condition where someone’s adrenaline levels increase when they are exposed to a stressor that they perceive to be threatening. PoTS is a physiological health condition where someone’s adrenaline levels increase when they are exposed to PoTS-related triggers such as orthostatic stress, hot environments, dehydration etc.
Are you starting to see how there is room for confusion here? PoTS and anxiety are very different health conditions, but their symptom profiles overlap because they both involve adrenaline, which moves someone into a fight and flight state.
Physiology for Psychology by Emily Conchrane on the British Psychological Society website
A great one to share with therapists and other health care professionals who need a beginners’ introduction to POTS.
The Hermeneutical Injustice of ME
on #ThereForME website by Ella Barnard
Interesting piece where philosophy graduate and Substack author, Ella Barnard, finds herself lost for words trying to describe the reality of ME/CFS. Words just don’t match what is going on – and yet, in the absence of definitive tests they are all we have. It’s key reading for therapists who want to help their clients understand and find the words to describe their experiences of this illness.
For me, one of the hardest parts of living with ME was the absence of a clear framework for describing and understanding it. The way I had once made sense of my body no longer applied. Before I had ME, fatigue was something that disappeared after a good night’s sleep. Sickness was something that passed with paracetamol and a few days of rest.
Suddenly, those things weren’t true any more, and I had no reference points for what I was experiencing.
And yes – I had to look up what ‘hermeneutical’ meant…
Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains it thus: “Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation. Hermeneutics plays a role in a number of disciplines whose subject matter demands interpretative approaches, characteristically, because the disciplinary subject matter concerns the meaning of human intentions, beliefs, and actions, or the meaning of human experience as it is preserved in the arts and literature, historical testimony, and other artifacts.”
Ready anything good recently?
We’re keen to share good research and other articles and news related to chronic illness and psychological support – if you find something you think is worth sharing then let us know! We’ll consider academic articles, journalism, films, book reviews etc…
Photo credit: Thanks to Priscilla du Preez an Unsplash for the photo at the top of this post.
