What is Psychosomatic Disorder?
Psychosomatic illness/disorder is preoccupation with fear of having serious physical disease without any medical basis for it. According to the DSMIV: “Psychosomatic disorder is a chronic, severe disorder characterised by many recurring physical symptoms, particularly some combination of pain and digestive, sexual, and neurological symptoms, that cannot be explained by a physical disorder.” It is a history of many physical complaints beginning before the age of 30 years that occur over a period of several years. The diagnostic criteria suggests that each of the following must have been met, with the individual symptoms occurring at any time during the course of the disturbance: The patient has at some stage experienced a total of at least eight symptoms from the following list for which the symptoms need not be concurrent. • PAIN SYMPTOMS ( four or more) related to different sites, such as head, abdomen, back, joints, extremities, chest or rectum, or related to body functions such as m
