What is a Psychosomatic Disease?

According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, Psychosomatic disorder, also called Psycho-physiological disorder, is a ‘condition in which psychological stresses adversely affect physiological (somatic) functioning to the point of distress. It is a condition of dysfunction or structural damage in bodily organs through inappropriate activation of the involuntary nervous system and the glands of internal secretion’. 

Psychosomatic disorders are the expression of the adverse impacts of emotional disturbances through the body or behaviour, as various identifiable illnesses. Psyche is mind and soma is body. ‘Psychosomatic’ means any form of emotional impact (adverse or beneficial), which finds expression through the body or behaviour of a person.

These disorders or diseases are either induced afresh or are unpleasant aggravation of pre-existing ailments. Psychosomatic diseases do not usually respond favourably to standard allopathic treatment. As a result, the patient may go from one doctor to another for relief, until the ailment starts seriously affecting the general health and, of course, the purse. In many such cases wrong diagnoses, hence wrong treatment, add to their woes. Psychosomatic conditions are painful and real, hence cannot be wished away as ‘It is all in the mind’.  

Unfortunately there is a great social stigma attached to taking psychiatric treatment; and as a result innumerable people suffer unnecessary health complications.   Majority of people who need to visit psychiatrists are normal people who had various forms of stresses in life, which manifest in different people differently. When these problems are not addressed sooner, the health condition could deteriorate and seriously affect the quality of life.

The major examples of psychosomatic diseases are reported to include panic disorder, OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), anorexia ADHD (attention deficit hyperactive disorder), irritable bowel syndrome (NIH),  peptic ulcer, primary (‘essential’) hypertension, certain cardiovascular conditions, bronchial asthma and migraine. (Sources: Gerard V. Sunnen and Diapedia and others). An internationally renown psychiatrist once confided that when he was a visiting consultant to an allopathic hospital he found at least four heart patients on a single day who needed psychiatric treatment rather than treatment for heart.

 

The psychosomatic illnesses dealt with in our website are:

Back to Top


Have you any questions?

Click here > Questions/Comments   or   Confidential 


© All rights reserved