Chronic Fatigue Syndrome has emerged in the end of 1980, in developed countries as United States, Canada and United Kingdom. We aim to present the chronic fatigue syndrome in the context of other functional syndromes. We intend to analyze its symptoms, and the remarkable absence of an anatomophysiological finding related to this condition. We will discuss, since the distinction between somatic and mental disease, the legitimacy/illegitimacy effects suffered by the chronic fatigue syndrome patient. We will analyze the patient reaction of searching for a somatic explanation to the disease, as a way to turn the chronic fatigue syndrome into a reliable condition, and as a way of avoiding associations with psychosomatic diseases.
Chronic fatigue syndrome; medically unexplained symptoms; psychosomatics