The many faces of fatigue
Photo by Inset Agency on Unsplash When I started my research into fatigue, I was surprised by the complexity of fatigue and it took me a while to get to grips with the many ways it is defined. We use the one word 'fatigue' to describe a range of experiences and symptoms. When I talk to therapists and people with brain injury who live with fatigue, they identify different types of fatigue: mental (cognitive), physical, and emotional fatigue. In my current research project, the need to label fatigue as one type or another is important because people associate different types of fatigue with different types of activity. Some researchers write about exertion fatigue and chronic fatigue, others about fatigue and fatigability, state or trait fatigue (Tseng e al, 2010, Kluger et al, 2011, Wylie & Flashman , 2018). Kluger argues that we need to separate the perception of feeling fatigued from the concept of fatigability when considering neurological conditi...