Sick and tired.

This programme looks at how children thought to be suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome (Myalgic encephalomyelitis or ME) are diagnosed and treated. We hear how Georgie Sheldon was locked into a children's psychiatric ward for 10 weeks and only allowed 2 visits a week from her family. She developed chronic depression and eventually left the hospital. One other family were accused of abuse because they refused to admit their son to a locked psychiatric ward to treat his ME. And one mother had problems getting the medical profession to acknowledge that her daughter might have ME; instead the mother was diagnosed with Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy. Finally a case is highlighted in which a 16-year-old boy, so ill with ME that he couldn't even swallow, was made a ward of court in order to get him into a psychiatric hospital against the parents' wishes.