A research psychologist has won the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Applied Research for work that includes a huge volume of well-respected studies into the origins, spread, classification and treatment of ME/CFS.
Leonard Jason, professor of psychology at Chicago's DePaul University where he directs their Center for Community Rsearch, will receive the award at the American Psychological Association's annual convention in Toronto, Canada, next August. The 65-year-old has also been invited to make a 50-minute speech to the convention.
Professor Jason, who was diagnosed with M.E. in 1990 after a bout of mononucleosis infection, also has special professional interests in smoking cessation and substance abuse and addiction.
News of his latest award was released through Cort Johnson's Health Rising blog shortly before Christmas.
Cort Johnson wrote:
Lenny Jason has played a important role in the growth and legitimization of the ME/CFS field. It’s hard and more than a little depressing to imagine what it would look like without him.
Among the many things he’s demonstrated include:
– a way to produce an effective research definition for ME/CFS
– that pacing works – for many patients – but not for a subset of ill patients
– that the Canadian Consensus and International Consensus definitions have issues that need resolution before they can be used as research definitions
– that people with ME/CFS have a kind of pathological fatigue not found in healthy people
– that different kinds of fatigue are found in ME/CFS
And that’s just in the past four years. Earlier, Jason’s work was critical in demonstrating, contrary to the CDC’s findings, that ME/CFS was a common disorder. He uncovered the flaws inherent in the CDC’s Empirical definition. He showed how easily ME/CFS could be distinguished from depression. The list goes on and on.