Chronic fatigue syndrome is a disorder that isn’t entirely understood. Typically, it affects women who are between thirty and fifty years old. It can also affect teenagers. A study finds that teenagers with chronic fatigue can feel better after receiving therapy from over the internet.
Chronic fatigue syndrome, or CFS, is something that a doctor might miss. The causes of this disorder are not entirely understood. People who have it experience continued tiredness that doesn’t go away after resting, and that is not caused by whatever medical conditions a person happens to have.
Symptoms resemble a really bad flu or viral infection. It includes: muscle aches, headaches, and extreme fatigue that lasts six months or more. The symptoms are severe enough to keep a person from participating in normal activities. Other symptoms include: confusion, concentration problems, joint pain (without swelling or redness), muscle aches, and feeling unrefreshed after sleeping for a proper amount of time.
I was aware that chronic fatigue syndrome tends to affect adult women. I had no idea that teenagers could also have this disease, but it turns out that they can. It is rare that it will happen to a teenager, but still possible. This can result in a lot of missed school days. The lack of energy is also going to impact the social life of a teenager. It is hard to hang out with friends when you are constantly exhausted.
A study found that teenagers who have chronic fatigue syndrome who received behavioral therapy online were much more likely to recover from it than were teens who had CFS and received the same therapy in person.
The study included 68 teenagers who had CFS for almost two years. They were given access to cognitive behavioral therapy online. This type of therapy is a psychological form of treatment that focuses on changing a person’s patterns of thinking from something that is maladaptive to something that is much healthier for them. It can be used to help a person to cope with the symptoms of CFS. The study specifically tried to find out if online therapy would be as effective as in person therapy.
The researchers found that 96% of the teens who were in the study chose to participate in the online therapy. Out of that group, 97% of them chose to continue with it, and follow up with it.
After six months of online cognitive behavioral therapy 85% of the teens in the study who were doing the internet-delivered therapy said that they no longer had fatigue. Three-quarters of this group had returned to school. Only 27% of the teens who were doing in person therapy said that they no longer felt fatigue. Only 16% of that group had returned to school.
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