A disease that carries with it a social stigma causes additional and unnecessary suffering . This has often been so with myalgic encephalomyelitis ( me ) , or chronic-fatigue syndrome , as it is also known .
Toward the end of the 20th century , doctors came up with the term chronic fatigue syndrome ( or , in europe , myalgic encephalomyelitis ) to describe the set of symptoms that used to be called neurasthenia .