In reply to steve webster:
> (In reply to Michael Hood)
> if it does not have a psycholgical aspect.how come that in my area the nhs service is part of mental health and the team includes a psychiatrist.
Firstly I think that western medecine has historically gone down a route of "either it's physical or it's mental". This artificial divide may be closing as medicine/science develops but we've still got the historical baggage - e.g. the taboo about admitting to having mental conditions (you see I'm at it myself). I don't believe that this artificial divide exists in us, our minds & bodies are integrated.
Secondly, I believe that CFS/ME is one of those conditions that spans the mind & body. When CFS/ME was less well recognised about 20 years ago, there were attempts to try and pigeonhole it as a psychological illness with many psychologists insisting that they could cure it by psyhological treatment.
This led to the time when CFS/ME earned the "yuppy flu" moniker and lots of "just pull yourself together" and "but you look alright" type comments (both to people personally and in the press). The people who I've met who've had (or have) CFS/ME have tended to be busy, full-on kind of people who are always doing things and trying to get more done, the people who go back to work before they've fully recovered from an illness, etc (i.e. the kind of people who don't seem to understand the word "relax"). I suspect that relatively lazy people like myself are very unlikely to get CFS/ME.
Back to your original question. Because of the body/mind divide in the NHS we have mental health services being somewhat separated from the rest of medicine. I believe that CFS/ME has sometimes been placed in that area (even though the WHO classifies CFS/ME as neurological) because of the need to place it somewhere and the history of how CFS/ME was perceived (as detailed above).
From a pragmatic point of view, pyschologists may well be the best people in the NHS to help with the various techniques and coping strategies that can help with CFS/ME. My family didn't have much contact with psychologists during their illness so I can't comment on this from experience.
Also, CFS/ME can have psychological "complications" - especially depression (which thankfully my family didn't get) - which isn't suprising if you've gone from being fully active to incapacitated with no end in sight and no clear answers. There's no doubt that pyschologists would help in those areas.
Sorry for the long lecture, with this subject I find it difficult to stop once I get started