Dolphin
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Research Article
The ones progress forgot: medically unexplained conditions and the myth of recovery
Zoe SirotiakReceived 25 Jul 2025, Accepted 18 Jul 2026, Published online: 05 Aug 2026
Abstract
This essay explores the chronic marginalization of medically unexplained chronic health conditions, using myalgic encephalomyelitis and long COVID as examples of conditions facing broad systemic medical neglect.Drawing on a critical autoethnographic approach, the author writes from a dual position as both researcher and a person living with myalgic encephalomyelitis.
These conditions are consistently plagued by dismissal, underfunding, misdiagnosis, and psychologization of symptoms, disproportionately affecting marginalized individuals.
Rage and refusal are reframed not as pathological but as rational responses to medical injustice.
Highlighting lived experience and rejecting redemption-focused recovery narratives, this analysis challenges the assumption that progress is best measured through individual improvement and instead exposes how systemic barriers continue to propagate harm for those who do not recover.
Points of interest
- This paper considers how people with health conditions that are hard to diagnose and treat, such as chronic fatigue syndrome or long COVID, have historically been ignored or blamed for their symptoms.
- The author draws on both research findings and personal experience of living with chronic illness to show how people can be dismissed, blamed, or told their symptoms are ‘all in their head.’
- Women and non-white individuals with chronic conditions are more likely to be disbelieved and to receive poorer care for these conditions.
- The paper challenges the idea that people must always ‘get better,’ and shows how anger and refusal can be reasonable responses to being ignored or mistreated.
- Changes in healthcare are needed so that people who do not recover are still heard, supported, and treated with respect.
Keywords:
Last edited by a moderator: