Somatic Symptom Disorder

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Somatic Symptom Disorder is characterised by persistent and clinically significant somatic complaints that have a disproportionate impact on health-related thoughts, feelings, and behaviours related to said complaints. Both symptoms and the response to symptoms exist on a continuum. Of particular importance is that the symptoms do not need to be medically unexplained. Somatic symptom disorder can be diagnosed in someone with an accompanying recognised medical condition. In this way it avoids questioning the "validity" of the symptoms.

Diagnosis

The entity was first introduced in DSM-V in 2013 within the field of bodily distress. There are two important changes: (1) no requirement for the symptoms to be "organic" in origin, (2) certain psychological and behavioural features have to be present.

Table 1. Criteria for Somatic Symptom Disorder
A.	One or more somatic symptoms that are distressing or result in significant disruption of daily life.
B.	Excessive thoughts, feelings, behaviors related to the somatic symptoms or associated health concerns as manifested by at least one of the following:
	(i) Disproportionate and persistent thoughts about the seriousness of one's symptoms. (ii) Persistently high level of anxiety about health or symptoms (iii) Excessive time and energy devoted to these symptoms or health concerns
C.	Although any one somatic symptom may not be continuously present, the state of being symptomatic is persistent (typically more than 6 months).
From the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, (Copyright (c) 2013). American Psychiatric Association. All rights reserved

The condition is mild with only one of criteria B, moderate with two or more, and severe when there are two or more plus the presence of multiple somatic complaints or one very severe somatic symptom.^[1]

References

↑ Henningsen, Peter (2018-03). "Management of somatic symptom disorder". Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience. 20 (1): 23–31. doi:10.31887/DCNS.2018.20.1/phenningsen. ISSN 1958-5969. PMC 6016049. PMID 29946208. Check date values in: |date= (help)

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[1] Henningsen, Peter (2018-03). "Management of somatic symptom disorder". Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience. 20 (1): 23–31. doi:10.31887/DCNS.2018.20.1/phenningsen. ISSN 1958-5969. PMC 6016049. PMID 29946208. Check date values in: |date= (help)

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