Abnormal Psychology Somatoform Disorder Example

Abnormal Psychology Somatoform Disorder Example Abnormal Psychology: Somatoform Disorder â€" Essay Example > Introduction Somatoform disorder is a group of mental disorders that are placed in a common category, basing on their external symptoms. According to Dimsdale (2009), the disorders are characterized by physical complaints that seem to be medical in origin and cannot be described in terms of physical disease, the cause of substance abuse or by another psychological disorder. Somatoform is a psychological disorder that is usually characterized by physical symptoms which include physical illness or injury. The disorders are always hard to be explained fully by a general medical condition, direct impact of a substance or to be linked with another mental disorder such as panic disorder. Patients with somatoform disorder may worried about their health because doctors find it hard to establish the cause for the individual’s health problems (Surhone Timpledon 2010). The history of somatoform disorderAccording to Trimble (2004), the prehistoric Egyptians attributed somatoform disorders to a wandering uterus. Rene Descartes’ seventeenth century paradigm of separation among the psyche and soma protected the advancement of reductionist medical model with dualist outlook that affect the management of conversion symptoms. In the eighteenth century, disease theories such as humoral theories and master-organ theories emerged (Shives, 2007). In the nineteenth century, reflex theory stated that all organs can influence all other organs irrespective of the mind and the will. According to Videbeck (2010), Charcot conceptualized hysteria as an inborn Central Nervous System disease that is caused by functional lesions in nervous system and cannot be localized. Towards the end of nineteenth century, the concept of dissociation was known as psychological automatisms and emphasized the coexistence of different mental systems that would be incorporated into the perception of an identity of a person (Dimsdale, 2009). The concept of dissociation was initially influenced by Freud ’s psychoanalysis model. Early neurobiological models also suggested that conversion reactions were associated with conflicts, including dangerous conflicts that were being associated with fear. Behavioral models explained conversion symptoms as communication diseases or a social construct with disagreement or lack of understanding among patients and doctors. Freud coined the term “conversion” to imply the substitution of somatic symptoms for reserved emotions. Historically, conversion terms such as ‘hysteria’ and ‘conversion hysteria’ were interchangeably employed to explain a condition characterized by one somatoform symptom, that is, a pseudo-neurologic system (Salloum Mezzich, 2009). According to Videbeck (2010), it is important to know that the current classification of psychological disorders reflects the present historical changes in the medicine and psychiatry practice. When psychiatry initially became a separate branch of medicine towards the end of nineteen th century, the term hysteria is used to describe mental disorders that are characterized by altered states of consciousness such as sleepwalking or physical symptoms such as leg with no neurologic cause that could not be explained fully by a medical disease. The term dissociation was applied in psychological mechanism that permits the mind to help in reducing painful feelings, memories or ideas that are lost to conscious recall. Sigmund Freud and other psychoanalysts believed hysterical symptoms results from dissociative thoughts or memories that re-emerged through bodily functions or trace states. Prior to categorization, all psychological disorders that were taken to be forms of hysteria were categorized together on the basis of this theory. Since 1980, somatoform disorders and dissociative disorders have been placed in different categories basing on their chief symptoms. Maj and Akiskal (2005) point out that somatoform disorders are characterized by turbulences of the physical conditions of the patient or a person’s capability to move the limbs or to walk, while the dissociative disorders are characterized by disturbances of the patient’s sense of identity or memory.