The only way a competent clinician can fail to distinguish CFS from depression is if the patient is outright lying. Most CFS patients for example have exercise

The only way a competent clinician can fail to distinguish CFS from depression is if the patient is outright lying. Most CFS patients for example have exercise intolerance, in which after the patient exercises more than his or her limit (which in severe cases could be walking on level ground for 10 minutes) everything proceeds like it does for a healthy person for 24 hours, then he or she becomes incapacitated for days. Eating lots of carbs, glutamine and creatine will tend to make the period of incapacitation shorter than they would otherwise be at least in non-severe cases of CFS. And this is consistently what happens after every exercise session that goes above the patient's individual exercise threshold. And if the threshold changes, it does so only gradually over a period of months. And if it changes, it changes for reasons other than how diligently or frequently the patient exercises. My experience (in California) has been that most doctors have been willing to assume I am being truthful, but a significant fraction seem to want to spend their time and energy only on conditions that the patient cannot be deceiving them about.