Somatoform+Disorders

//**Taken from**// **Psychology,** //**Fourth Edition, by David G. Myers**// Ellen becomes dizzy and nauseated in late afternoon—shortly before she expects her husband home. Her doctor and a neurologist cannot identify a physical cause. They suspect the symptoms have an unconscious psychological origin, possibly triggered by her mixed feelings about her husband. In **somatoform disorders,** such as Ellen’s, the distressing symptoms take a somatic (bodily) form, without apparent physical causes. One person may have a variety of complaints—vomiting, dizziness, blurred vision, difficulty in swallowing. Another may experience severe and prolonged pain. In China, where people less often express the emotional aspects of distress, bodily complaints are common (Draguns, 1990a). Because psychological explanations of anxiety and depression are socially less approved, the Chinese appear more sensitive to, and more willing to report, the bodily symptoms of their distress. Mr. Wu, a 36-year-old technician in Hunan, illustrates one of China’s most common psychological disorders (Spitzer & others, 1989). He finds work difficult because of his insomnia, fatigue, weakness, and headaches. Chinese herbs and Western medicines provide no relief. To his Chinese clinician, he seems not so much depressed as exhausted. Similar, generalized bodily complaints have often been observed in African cultures (Binitie, 1975). Even to people in the West, somatic symptoms are familiar. To a lesser extent, we have all experienced inexplicable physical symptoms under stress. It is little comfort to be told that the problem is “all in your head.” Although the symptoms may be psychological in origin, they are nevertheless genuinely felt. One type of somatoform disorder, more common in Freud’s day than ours, is **conversion disorder,** so called because anxiety was presumed to be converted into a physical symptom. A patient with a conversion disorder might lose sensation in a way that makes no neurological sense. Yet the physical symptoms would be real; one could stick pins in the affected area and get no response. Others experience unexplained paralysis, blindness, or an ability to swallow, and they are strangely indifferent to their problems. As you can imagine, somatoform disorders send people not to a psychologist or psychiatrist but to a physician. This is especially true of those who experience **hypochondriasis**. In this relatively common somatoform disorder, people interpret normal sensations (a stomach cramp today, a headache tomorrow) as symptoms of a dreaded disease. Sympathy or temporary relief from everyday demands may reinforce such complaints. No amount of reassurance by any physician convinces the patient not to worry. So the patient moves on to another physician, seeking and receiving more medical attention but failing to confront the disorder’s psychological root. **SUMMING UP** The somatoform disorders involve a somatic (bodily) symptom—a physiologically unexplained but genuinely felt ailment. The incidence of bodily symptoms of psychological stress varies among cultures. Freud was particularly fascinated by conversion disorders, in which anxiety seemed converted to a symptom that had no physiological basis. Today, hypochondriasis (interpreting one’s normal sensations as symptoms of a dreaded disease) is a more common somatoform disorder.
 * SOMATOFORM DISORDERS**

**somatoform disorders** Psychological disorders in which the symptoms take a somatic (bodily) form without apparent physical cause. **conversion disorder** A rare somatoform disorder in which a person experiences very specific genuine physical symptoms for which no physiological basis can be found. **hypochondriasis** A somatoform disorder in which a person misinterprets normal physical sensations as symptoms of a disease.
 * VOCABULARY**