ABSTRACT

Recommendations from the Department of Health are that the multidisciplinary teams should manage chronic fatigue syndrome. In other words, that there should be a variety of staff from different disciplines who are devising and implementing an agreed care plan. The evidence base would support cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and graded exercise. From the CBT perspective it can be useful to speak to the general practitioner at the assessment stage to try to gain further information about the person. If the person then has a course of CBT, then it is important to provide a detailed letter describing factors that have been worked on, and the outcome. The CBT practitioner should be able to work alongside the physiotherapist, though there may be some overlap over the issue of activity alteration, and plainly an agreed written care plan is important.