Somatic Conditions Intrinsic to Anxiety Disorders

Abstract

Although Johann Christian August Heinroth (1773-1843) introduced the term 'psychosomatic' into medical literature, up to the present day his contributions to the development of medicine and psychosomatics have been little acknowledged. The relationship between somatic and psychiatric conditions is assumed to be fluent; however, the concept “psychosomatic” brings with it a heavy semantic burden that has its roots in the philosophical dualism, accentuated in the Cartesian proposal, which has spread through modern rationality, and, with it, the conception of the disease in the medical field. The modern notion of health and illness make necessary to review dualistic positions, but often the everyday clinical practice still shows separated approaches for the mental and the somatic parts of the patient’s illness. A clear example of this useless but very spread dualistic approach is the group of anxiety disorders, which have been included alternatively among the somatic and among the mental conditions when, in fact, anxiety disorders include both strong somatic and mental dimensions which need to be dealt with. In this chapter we shall review the link of the joint hypermobility syndrome (JHS) and several anxiety conditions. This relationship is probably one of the strongest available evidences of the somatic components of anxiety disorders.