Psychiatric Status After Hysterectomy

Abstract

Forty-four randomly selected women who received noncancer hysterectomy were evaluated preoperatively and at one-year follow-up. The findings did not support the hypothesis that the hysterectomy procedure is followed by an excess of psychiatric symptoms. The group, in fact, was less symptomatic at follow-up than presurgically. On the whole, women manifesting psychiatric symptoms during the follow-up had had similar problems before surgery. Many of the symptoms were associated with a presurgical diagnosis of hysteria (Briquet's somatization syndrome), found at a striking excess in the sample (27% vs the 1% or 2% expected). The authors suggest that when hysteria is diagnosed, therapeutic decisions regarding hysterectomy should be based on objective findings rather than on complaints, in that women with hysteria may be placed at risk of hysterectomy on the basis of psychiatric rather than gynecologic illness.