1. Somatic Symptom Disorder
Stacey Buchanan Going
November 24th, 2013

2. What is Somatic Symptom
Disorder?


A mental disorder with persistent and
clinically somatic complaints
This is coupled with:
−
Excessive thoughts, feelings and rash
behaviors about the symptoms
−
Ranges from mild to severe

3. Types of Somatic Symptom
Disorders

Four somatic symptom disorders listed
−
Complex somatic symptom disorder
−
Factitious Disorder
−
Conversion Disorder
−
Somatic Symptoms (not otherwise
specified)

4. DSM V Criteria for Diagnosis



One or more somatic symptoms
Excessive thoughts, feelings, behaviors
that relate to somatic symptoms (or
associated w/ health concerns
Somatic symptom does not have to always
be present but must be persistent

5. Examples of Somatic Symptoms

Headaches

Stomach aches

Even as severe as blindness, or inability to
walk
−
Most likely in Conversion disorder

6. Prevalence of Somatic Symptom
Disorder

Hilderink et al 2012
−
11 to 21% in younger adults
−
10 to 20% in middle age adults
−
1.5 to 13% in older adults

7. Biological/Environmental Factors


Most well known cause: stress or exposure
to trauma
Strong correlation between anxiety,
depression, and somatic symptoms

8. Treatments

Psychotherapy

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

Hard to treat because
−
Hard to convince patient it is not an
actual medical symptom
−
For factitious disorder- you treat the
behavior not the illness

9. Future Research


Anxiety causes somatic symptoms or does
somatic symptoms cause anxiety?
Changes from the DSM-IV and V
−
How does it effect the prevalence of
disorder
−
Will it lead to more misdiagnosis

10. Implications


Not much known about treatments of
somatic symptom disorder
The least known about somatic disorder is
Conversion Disorder
−
Because of the severity and the inability
to find anything medically wrong with
them
−
The symptoms disappear as fast as they
appear