Essay On Somatoform Disorders

Other common features include self-induced vomiting, laxative abuse, excessive exercising, distorted body image, and morbid preoccupation with energy intake. Physical findings include dehydration, electrolyte imbalance, hypothermia, poor peripheral circulation and even circulatory failure, cardiac arrythmias, hepatic steatosis, and ovarian and uterine regression (Bryant-Waugh and Lask, 1995).

Starkey's "hysterical bobbysoxers" diagnosis has entered the popular canon and school textbooks, while Hansen's verdict of "hysterical in the scientific sense of that term” has been accepted as true by the majority of scholars, Demos, McMillen, and even Karlsen, who treat the cause of affliction as settled and go on to other projects. While I see the cause as not settled, I will look instead at the way the same descriptions of affect have produced such mutually exclusive interpretations -- fraud and illness -- and suggest why fraud went entirely out of fashion, after being accepted for over a century, while hysteria came into fashion oddly, only Upham allows a mixture of fraud and illness. I will suggest that these shifts in interpretation are not founded on any new knowledge or new theories of psychology, but grow out of changes in cultural and ideological attitudes, especially toward women, and that they are made possible by the ambiguities of historical documents, by inadequate analyses of the explanations that were available in 1692, and occasionally by poor reasoning on the part of the historians.

Chapter 7 covers the fundamentals of somatoform disorders and dissociative disorders. After reading this chapter, I became really interested in somatoform disorders. Somatoform disorder is physical pain due to psychosocial reasons and often misdiagnosed. Just like the story in the beginning of the chapter described the man who was paralyzed but did not have any physical wounds. This a strong example of how powerful the mind. This was discussed briefly in previous chapters, but I better understand the concept of this somatoform disorders. People with hysterical somatoform disorder have changes in their physical functioning. Conversion disorder is a psychosocial conflict that affects the voluntary motor and sensory functioning. Somatization disorders have a long lasting physical

This chronic and often unpredictable disease can cause a wide range of symptoms, including, but not in any way limited to:

According to Freud hysteria is a nervous disorder that causes violent fits of laughter, crying, and imagination. It is a lack of

Somatic symptom disorder (SSD) has had many different names Somatization disorder; Somatiform disorders; Briquet syndrome; and Illness anxiety disorder. It was first diagnosed in 1982. It was added to the DSM on july 4 2013 Since being discovered, how has it evolved?

A recent study of health care utilization in America, estimates that 25–72% of office visits to primary care doctors are related to psychological distress that takes the form of physical symptoms. Another study estimates that at least 10% of all medical treatments and diagnostic services are conducted for patients that show no evidence of organic disease or injury. These studies show that conversion disorder is larger than we think or know and should be studied and researched more to find a method of understanding, coping, and prevention. Conversion disorder was first known as hysteria before 1600 and was linked with an illness of the uterus or given metaphysical explanations such as witchcraft or demonic possession. However, in the early 17th century, a more “psychologically minded” explanation of hysteria was introduced and it was classified as a variety of melancholy by Robert Burton in his book Anatomy of Melancholy. Shortly after, Thomas Sydenham discovered that both men and women could suffer from hysteria and a Scottish physician named Robert Whytt wrote a book entitled Nervous, Hypochondriac and Hysteric Disorders, which classified hysteria as a nervous disorder. Between 1997

cause for many years is a chemical imbalance in the brain. This could be an

Is Hysteria, like nervousness, a legitimate medical problem or was it a way for women to escape the harsh realities of their lives or receive attention from their neglectful husbands? In the Los Angeles Times short article “Shattered Nerves” published in 1889 a normal school girl’s sanity is questioned. Brought before Judge Cheney, Alice Miller was deemed not insane and was sent to State Normal Institute for a year. “After a thorough investigation the commissioners decided that, while exhibiting much nervousness, the young lady is not insane…It is thought that this has affected her so severely that her nervous system has gone to pieces…and is affected with melancholia” (“Shattered Nerves”). The article concludes with, “There will be another examination Monday, when it will be decided what to do with the young lady.” This article does not detail what could have brought on Alice Miller’s nervousness, was it due to schooling or stress? Along these lines, women at the time were not allowed to pursue a higher education because too much stress would cause menstrual problems and that would mostly likely result in insanity. Could Alice have been overwhelmed due to school, was there a family issue occurring, was she on her menstrual cycle or could her nervousness been caused by the weather? The Los Angeles Times article “A New Crank,” a more severe case, an unnamed woman who was immensely fulfilled by her spirituality believed that she was meant to take

The patient may complain of lower extremity weakness, spinal cord damage, fever, back pain, flank pain, increased appetite, and excessive thirst. Discharge from the vagina/ penis and/ or sudden weight loss is also red flag responses.

TVs playing. Texts incoming. Phone calls ringing. Music streaming. In today’s entertainment heavy and device rich world, today’s youth have more choices as to where in to invest their focus. As a result of these plentiful distractions, misconceptions and lores are developing around the actual, factual instances of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder among today’s young learners. Regardless of what these public beliefs suggest, research on the disorder and the scientific method has more substantial information to provide. For this reason, ADHD’s contentious reputation entitles it to an intricate overview. Indeed, scientists and research support that ADHD is a diagnosable condition that can be found among young students, has a homogenous set of treatment options, renders a student eligible for educational assistance in a majority of today’s classrooms, in spite of its semi-controversial reputation.

The author(s) of this work discuss the history of medical hysteria, and its relationship with seizures as described by ancient physicians. Hysteria is described as a medical issue, limited to woman, by ancient Greek physicians due to movement in their uterus; this idea is passed over to the Egyptians. The theory of hysteria being related to the uterus continued to be developed by ancient thinkers such as Plato, who described hysteria as an animal that would travel around a woman’s body. During the second century scientist began to express their opposition to theories expressing the uterus as an animal and sought more logical explanations. Al-Akhawayni was the first to explicitly differentiate hysteria and

Many people ask, “What is hysteria?” According to dictionary.com, the exact definition is: an uncontrollable outburst of emotion or fear, often characterized by irrationality, laughter, weeping, etc. As well, there is a psychological answer for hysteria. Many psychologists state that hysteria can range from numbness to paralysis as well as vomiting to erectile dysfunction. With that being said, many people know hysteria as the state when people become irrational. Throughout history, there have been many cases of hysteria, one of the most well-known being the Salem witch trials. There have been more recent cases of mass hysteria. With the year 1999 coming to an end, many worried and in their panic launched the world into believing

When a person has complaints about physical illnesses that cannot be explained medically and these claims lead to interference in their lives it is known as a somatoform disorder. Hypochondriacs fall into this category of disorders. People may also actually experience loss of motor or sensory functions that cannot be explained any damage or problems with their bodies. A dissociative disorder is involved more in the disturbance of identity or memory. People will sometimes forget traumatic events in their lives or forget who they are. Other cases involve the development of multiple personalities where a person assumes the identity of more than one person which are unaware of the other identities. This type of dissociative disorder is often

Panic disorder first appeared in the American Classification Manual (DSM-III) (APA, 1980) in 1980. In the 19th century, panic attacks were referred to as acute episodes of distress and was described as “a feeling of oppression or weight in the epigastrium, associated to a great deal of difficulty in breathing or excessive sadness” (Berrios, 1996). The 18th century was when psychiatry began to establish itself as a respected and independent branch of study. Before the development of psychiatry, panic terrors and other psychological disorders were attributed to the supernatural. The word ‘panic’ derives itself from Greek mythology where the god Pan would cause an uncontrollable and irrational fear upon anyone who would come across