Psychosomatic Distress Research Articles

Long- and short-term blood pressure and RR-interval variability and psychosomatic distress in chronic fatigue syndrome

Long- and short-term blood pressure and RR-interval variability and psychosomatic distress in chronic fatigue syndrome

The shadow of femininity in the treatment of psycho-somatic distress

This paper considers inter-generational transmission as a factor influencing choice of affect in psycho-somatic distress. The Greek myth of Pandora's box is explored within the context of unravelling cultural meanings and collective experience that find analogues in prototype figures. The case material presented illustrates the functional aspects of the body as recorder of transmission suggesting devaluation of the feminine. The practical aspects of translating into words the explosive bodily expressions in the therapeutic process are presented.

Blood pressure and RR-interval variability in psychosomatic distress in the chronic fatigue syndrome

Blood pressure and RR-interval variability in psychosomatic distress in the chronic fatigue syndrome

The impact of household economy on stress reactions among professional women

The impact on felt stress and and stress-related behaviors of household composition and proportion of pay utilized to sustain the household economy was evaluated using a homogenous group of female professionals. After controlling for individual-difference and work-load influences, the impact of household variables was found to be weak and inconsistent. While living alone with a child and having a larger proportion of one's salary allocated to sustaining the household economy was associated with psychosomatic distress, household factors did not predict sickdays, medication usage and alcohol consumption. The reasons for these weak and inconsistent findings were explored.

The utility of the Psychosomatic Symptom Checklist among hospitalized patients

We examined the utility of the Psychosomatic Symptom Checklist in an inpatient medical setting with particular emphasis on the putative ability of the PSC to discriminate psychosomatic from nonpsychosomatic patients. First, 80 hospitalized psychosomatic patients were compared to 80 hospitalized medical patients on the PSC. Second, a sample of 187 psychosomatic patients was studied to examine the relationship among psychosomatic distress, depression, and functional impairment. The results indicate that while psychosomatic patients scored significantly higher than comparable medical patients on the PSC, discriminant analyses indicate that the PSC is not able to identify psychosomatic patients in an inpatient medical setting. Factor analyses and correlations show that the PSC is positively related to increased depression and decreased functional status. Results are interpreted in light of current psychosomatic theory.

Strain, Social Support, and Mental Health in Rural Elderly Individuals

This study examined the relationships among social support, life strain, and mental health in a sample of 210 rural elderly individuals. Life strain was operationalized as economic deprivation, illness disability, and ADL impairment. Demographic characteristics had little effect on mental health. Physical health status was highly predictive of life satisfaction and psychological distress among rural elderly individuals. Disability associated with chronic illness and ADL impairment was related to increased reports of symptoms of emotional and psychosomatic distress. Measures of social contacts and instrumental support exerted small to moderate effects on life satisfaction, psychosomatic distress, and emotional distress. Affective support moderated the effects of health-related strain on mental health.

The psychological impact of video display terminals on employees' well-being.

A survey was administered to two large groups of employees, one a group of health care employees and the other a group of employees from a large insurance firm. The survey was used to determine whether video display terminal (VDT) operators experience greater psychosomatic distress, job tension, job dissatisfaction, and strain than nonoperators or employees who operate VDTs infrequently. After controlling for demographic factors, tenure, and role strain variables, findings suggest that hours of VDT use has an impact on employee well-being, though role strain was more consistently related to outcome measures.

The Psychosomatic Symptom Checklist revisited: reliability and validity in a chronic pain population.

A psychometric evaluation of the SUNYA Revision of the Psychosomatic Symptom Checklist (PSC) was conducted with 405 chronic pain patients who completed the PSC as part of a diagnostic battery. Several properties of the measure were examined, including its reliability, internal consistency, discriminant validity, and factor structure. Contrary to a previous study, the measure demonstrated a modest reliability, a poor discriminant validity, and a multifactor structure that accounted for only a small proportion of the variance in the measure. Thus, the PSC did not appear to be an adequate measure of general psychosomatic distress when used with chronic pain patients. For these patients, the PSC may measure symptom clusters rather than general psychosomatic symptomatology. Since the PSC is used in various clinical populations, the results underscore the importance of investigating the properties of the measure in these populations.

Psychometric properties of a Children's Psychosomatic Symptom Checklist.

The psychometric properties of the Children's Psychosomatic Symptom Checklist, developed for this study, were examined. When administered to 196 sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students who ranged in age from 11 to 14 years (M = 12.1, SD = .94), the scale items demonstrated a good internal consistency. Item-total correlations were generally significant and exceeded .60, and a coefficient alpha of .83 was obtained. Results of a factor analysis indicated that 70% of the total variance was accounted for by the first factor, best interpreted as general psychosomatic distress. Divergent validity was additionally demonstrated through only modest correlations with measures of anxiety and depression. Use of the checklist is discussed.

Experiences from a psychiatric service to immigrant groups using native therapists.

Experiences from an out-patient department giving psychiatric service in their own language to three immigrant groups to Sweden, namely Finnish, Yugoslavian and Greek patients are described. Compared to Swedish patients, depressive disorders and alcohol abuse were much less common among the patients from southern Europe, who instead showed much more of psychosomatic distress. Treatment results were not too encouraging, a negative social situation of the patient was often difficult to change. In the future, the author considers it advantageous to have one psychiatric immigrant department for one nationality at one place and to connect it to an already existing department for Swedish patients.

Nuclear Anxiety and Psychological Functioning Among Young Adults

Theoretical speculation has been raised that living in a world potentially compromised by nuclear war and nuclear power plant accidents affects psychosocial development and may result in various types of dysfunction. This study examines the associations between nuclear anxiety and problems experienced in seven general areas of life. These areas include drug problems, psychosomatic complaints, relationship problems, emotional distress, work problems, health problems, and family problems. To control for spurious or confounding effects, the influences of social conformity and social resources were controlled. Data were obtained from 739 young adults, and latent-variable analyses were used to address these issues. Nuclear anxiety was moderately related to psychosomatic complaints and emotional distress, modestly related to subjective perceptions of health and family problems, and was not associated with drug problems, relationship problems, and work problems. Although this cross-sectional data cannot determin...

Three studies of the psychologic changes in chronic headache patients associated with biofeedback and relaxation therapies.

Three separate, but similar, studies are described in which the psychologic effects (depression, anxiety, and overall degree of psychosomatic distress) of nonpharmacologic treatment (relaxation and/or biofeedback training) for three kinds of chronic headache (tension, migraine, and mixed migraine and tension) were evaluated. Results showed consistently (across all three studies) significant reductions in depression and trait-anxiety associated with receiving treatment, regardless of headache type or treatment outcome. The significant reduction for overall degree of psychosomatic distress was not differentially related to receiving treatment and thus could have been due to prolonged monitoring of headaches or test-retest regression effects.

Psychometric properties of the SUNYA revision of the Psychosomatic Symptom Checklist.

The Psychosomatic Symptom Checklist (PSC), a questionnaire assessing psychosomatic symptoms, was administered to two separate samples of college students. For Sample 1 (N = 698), the questionnaire was readministered to three separate subsets at intervals of either 1 week (N = 143), 4 weeks (N = 74), or 8 weeks (N = 48). Each subset of subjects recompleted the PSC on only one of the three retest intervals. Based on the initial administration an analysis of the normative data revealed a mean total score of 23.7, suggesting a relatively low degree of psychosomatic symptoms in this group. Although total scores decreased slightly over time, test-retest correlations remained high (r greater than 0.80, P less than 0.0001). Individual item correlations was greater than r = 0.50 throughout. Sample 2 (N = 249) completed the PSC, Beck Depression Assertiveness Scale (RAS), and intercorrelations were computed between these measures. This analysis revealed little overlap between the psychosomatic complaints assessed by the PSC and other commonly used measures of psychological distress. Finally, a factor analysis revealed one major factor on which all but 2 of the 17 questionnaire items loaded significantly. These results suggest that the PSC is sensitive to psychosomatic distress and remains reliable over time.

Psychosocial aspects of disease and their management.

The pathogenesis of psychosomatic distress is considered. This emphasises interest in aetiology of distress rather than solely of disease. The influence of psychological aspects is as important whether the disease is of known or unknown aetiology, and can be of greater importance in poorer socio-economic circumstances. The doctor's role is to tease out the influence of these many factors. Certainly a holistic approach is necessary to assess and manage appropriately patients with disability. There is an important role for psychiatrists within services for management of such patients. Leadership by all doctors and psychiatrists in particular to apply the holistic approach should be encouraged.

Behavioral biology in medicine.

The continuing emergence of a clinically helpful behavioral biology is a basic scientific trend in contemporary psychiatry and medicine. Much of this new knowledge describes the genetic, maturational and learned developmental structure and physiology of the behaving brain and body. The dichotomy between the depersonalized body and the disembodied person is no longer very productive either for pragmatic or for heuristic purposes. The growing science of behavioral genetics indicates that man is never an “empty” or a “standard” organism. Specific motivational and capacity factors are genetically conditioned. Since medicine deals largely with the phenotypic individual, ordinary clinical assessment of symptoms and behavior may entirely miss the genotypic differences between persons who are labelled with the same but genetically non-differentiating diagnosis of schizophrenia, epilepsy and other diseases. The increasing knowledge of molecular biology coupled with the genetic study of animal behavior has given us an increasing awareness of our own evolved behavior. Some of this behavior originally “bred in” as adaptive to environments now remote in time, space and culture has now become maladaptive to the contemporary changing world. Animal research becomes, among other objectives, another method for studying our own behavioral past. Particularly useful to the clinician are the accumulating efforts of the central neurophysiologists in demonstrating the interrelationships among arousal, emotional and cognitive, information-processing behavioral states. Emotions are the labels for the resultant effects of many variables. What makes emotions “abnormal” are not “abnormal” causes but the differences in the frequency, intensity or duration of emotional responses. “Hung-up” emotional states may be modified by a person-centered reappraisal of the stimulus, by an actual environmental alteration, by a person-centered reappraisal of himself in the situation, by a change in the availability or content of the environmental resources for problem-seeing and solving, or by a pharmacologic, physiologic or structural alteration of appropriate regional or integrative brain anatomy and process. Clinically relevant advances are being made in the study of the operant learning of the autonomic nervous system in body-organ adaptation to the internal milieu. Increased clinical modification of psychosomatic distress can now be based upon the current investigations of biofeedback sensation and the learning of sensory discrimination and of sensory awareness from “inside the skin.”