Disability evaluation of fibromyalgia

These cases represent individuals who feel they have a severe impairment and are "disabled." They have been labeled with fibromyalgia. They are truly distressed. Their symptoms, their courses, are more chronic and refractory than those of medically ill patients, and they are high users of medical services, laboratory investigations, and surgical procedures. These patients see multiple providers simultaneously and frequently switch physicians. They are difficult to care for, and they reject psychosocial factors as an influence on their symptoms. Such persons "see themselves as victims worthy of a star appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show. A sense of bitterness emerges...." Shorter, a historian, believes that fibromyalgia is "heaven-sent to doctors as a diagnostic label for pain patients who display an important neurotic component in their illness. Our culture increasingly encourages patients to conceive vague and nonspecific symptoms as evidence of real disease and to seek specialist help for them; and the rising ascendancy of the media and the breakdown of the family encourage patients to acquire the fixed belief that they have a given illness...." Regarding the finding of "disability," this is a social construct, and many authors believe it is society and the judicial system who must decide who can work. To remain objective, the physician should report the objective clinical information. Physicians need not and should not sit in judgment of the veracity of another human being.