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Paper short abstract

This presentation explores the moving thresholds and the tensions between chronic conditions resulting from managing well-known health problems, such as cancer, and long-term health problems associated with uncertain and not fully understood medical conditions, such as ME/CFS or fibromyalgia.

Paper long abstract

The concept of chronicity, though widely used in biomedical language, is ambiguous. This fluid definition is part of its success. Recent anthropological research has discussed how medical innovations and the rhetoric surrounding these innovations have created forms of chronicity that are redefining the perception of certain diseases—such as AIDS, cancer, and heart problems—transforming them from potentially fatal to chronic conditions with which patients can live for a long time (see, for example, the special issue edited by Greco and Graber, Anthropology and Medicine, 2022). In this context, chronicity represents a category through which to negotiate and convey medical success. However, the category of chronicity takes on a different value and role in some multi-symptomatic syndromes that are not fully known. This uncertainty has historically fuelled psychologising explanations. The idea that illnesses such as fibromyalgia, ME/CFS (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome), or Long Covid may be chronic clashes with approaches that, implicitly or explicitly, convey the idea that these illnesses can be reversed, at least in part, with the right behaviours and mindset. We use rich data deriving from different research projects on cancer and on uncertain syndromes such as ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, and Long Covid, involving patients and medical professionals in the UK. This presentation intends to explore the shifting thresholds of chronicity and long-term disability. In some cases, long-term health problems are viewed as a reasonably successful outcome, while in others they are perceived as problems of psychological rather than physiological origin, leading to some scepticism.