Psychological Factors in Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Implications in Counseling

Abstract

The condition of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) includes fatigue and exhaustibility, muscle pain, muscle weakness, sore throat, fever, headache, impaired memory, concentration difficulties and sleep disorder. Whereas Fibromyalgia (FM) include symptoms such as aches, pain, stiffness and powerlessness in the muscles, fatigue, exhaustibility, headache, swelling, numbness, bowel problems, and sleeping difficulties Sometimes, fibromyalgia patients report anxiety, tension, insomnia, and depressive mood, while some patients reported psychiatric disorders such as major depressive and anxiety disorders. Fibromyalgia (FM) often categorized, as a ‘functional somatic syndrome’, or sometimes, ‘somatization disorder’. Both CFS and FM share the symptomatology to a large extent. Patients with fibromyalgia also meet the criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome whereas individuals with chronic fatigue syndrome also manifest concurrent fibromyalgia. In absence of any biomedical test or a stable physiological marker, researchers also conceptualize chronic fatigue syndrome as a psychiatric disorder, or manifestation of a psychiatric condition such as somatization disorder. The present paper is a review of the studies conducted in the area to understand the nature, clinical picture and causal factors for these conditions. It is also aimed to provide the information about the underlying mechanism of CFS and FM to counsellors to incorporate this body of knowledge while counselling with the similar kind of problems.