I wrote yesterday on stress, abuse & mind-body links that might be relevant for some chronic fatigue syndrome sufferers. There is a good deal of research too on other - possibly linked - vulnerability factors that may predispose some people to later development of fatigue problems - including a number of studies on unhelpful levels/types of perfectionism.

In yesterday's post, I described the pre-workshop publicity for this day on treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome.  How did I find the workshop in actual practice? Well, I enjoyed meeting Trudie Chalder. She came across as very alive, friendly, bright, knowledgeable. Great.  And her two decades or so of dedicated exploration of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is so impressive ... one of those research journeys that I find it heart-warming to look at.  For me the workshop itself was a bit of a funny mix. In the morning session we were given an overview/update on chronic fatigue syndrome and its standard CBT treatment.

The 40th British Association for Behavioural & Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP) conference is at Leeds University.  As usual it's preceded by a choice of pre-conference workshops. Three of the nineteen initially on offer have been cancelled, but there's still a wealth of options. I'm due to go to Trudie Chalder, from the London Institute of Psychiatry, speaking on "Emotional Processing in the Context of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Implications for Persistent Physical Symptoms in General".  The pre-workshop publicity states: "More than half of people with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) have co-morbid depression or anxiety.

Here are a collection of handouts, questionnaires and information sheets about sleep, ADHD, and fatigue.  The sleep handouts are mostly based on Colin Espie's excellent self-help book "Overcoming insomnia and sleep problems" and the intention is that the handouts would be used in conjunction with this book - see the bottom of the page for more details. 

Sleep diary and instructions - a key component of Espie's CBT programme is the use of this weekly diary form to both assess the sleep problem initially and then monitor progress.

Sleep diary, measuring progress - this is a form that can be helpful when measuring overall progress using information from the sleep diaries.

Sleep advice - fairly standard general advice about improving sleep. 

Sleep stimulus control - this and sleep restriction (see below) are probably both the most challenging and the most useful components of a CBT approach for insomnia.  

Here are half a dozen recent research studies broadly on aspects of cognitive-behavioural therapy - computer delivery for addiction, a couple on therapist competence, CBT for compulsive shopping, a sy

“

The will to win is not nearly as important as the will to prepare to win.

” - Anonymous

This section contains handouts, questionnaires and information sheets about sleep, ADHD, and fatigue.  The sleep handouts are mostly based on Colin Espie's excellent self-help book "Overcoming insomnia and sleep problems" and the intention is that the handouts would be used in conjunction with this book - see the bottom of the page for more details.  

Sleep diary and instructions - a key component of Espie's CBT programme is the use of this weekly diary form to both assess the sleep problem initially and then monitor progress.

Sleep diary, measuring progress - this is a form that can be helpful when measuring overall progress using information from the sleep diaries.

Here are some articles - mostly published in May - that I found particularly interesting: