In the absence of standardized care or targeted immunotherapies, the rare practitioner willing to treat ME/CFS as a biomedical condition will generally prescribe pharmaceuticals for specific symptom relief in combination with pacing one's activities. Counseling and other supportive care may be encouraged, but while therapy may help patients cope, it won't fix your illness, and exercise has been shown to be harmful for many sufferers. Full recovery is rare, and for many, it is a lifelong and degenerative condition.

We have long known that viral outbreaks leave some minority of the population with long-term symptoms and disability, as we are now seeing with long COVID, which shares many of the same signs and symptoms of ME/CFS: ineradicable exhaustion, brain deficits, post-exertional malaise. Beyond the disabling physical and cognitive issues, it is the medical neglect and disbelief that can hurt -- and in some cases kill. Per one 2015 study, patients with ME/CFS have the worst life quality, compared to patients with conditions including long-term mental illness, lung disease, and cancer. Suicide is a relatively common outcome for patients, the suffering so great and hope so dim. A 2024 study from Switzerland found that the disease had a negative mental impact on 88 percent of ME/CFS patients studied, with around 39 percent having suicidal thoughts. And, the authors added, a major factor contributing to those suicidal thoughts was being told the disease was "psychosomatic."