OBJECTIVE We evaluated the relationship between somatic symptoms and depressive conditions among patients visiting the general medicine clinic of a university hospital. METHODS We distributed interview forms to 332 consecutive patients who visited our clinic for the first time between March and July 2011. Somatic symptoms were rated using a symptom checklist, and depressive conditions were ev...

The finding that people of Chinese heritage tend to emphasize somatic rather than psychological symptoms of depression has frequently been discussed in the culture and mental health literature since the 1970s. Recent studies have confirmed that Chinese samples report more somatic and fewer psychological depression symptoms compared to "Western" samples. The question remains, however, as to whet...

In this cross-sectional study, all subjects attending a community based mental health clinic were examined with the objective to understand the presenting problems and to find out whether somatic complaints were the chief complaint, whether the somatic complaint produced any disability in financial, occupational and social spheres. Also an attempt is made to identify somatizing disorders using ...

OBJECTIVE Depression and anxiety have been suggested to be associated with systemic inflammation upregulation. However, results are not always consistent, which may be due to symptom heterogeneity of depression and anxiety. There are some indications that associations with inflammation are mainly driven by somatic symptoms of depression and anxiety. We therefore set out to evaluate the differen...

PURPOSE To evaluate the relationship between depressive symptoms and health care costs in outpatients with chronic medical illnesses in Korea, we screened for depressive symptoms in 1,118 patients with a chronic medical illness and compared the severity of somatic symptoms and health care costs. PATIENTS AND METHODS Data were compared between outpatients with depressive symptoms and those wit...

Small CW. Clinical measurement of myocardial infarct size: modification of a method for the estimation of creatine phosphokinase release after acute myocardial infarction. Unilateral somatic symptoms due to hyperventilation Recurrent unilateral sensory or motor symptoms (or both) are a poorly recognised presentation of the hyperventilation syndrome. We have seen 12 such cases during the past tw...

OBJECTIVE This study was conducted to examine the mediating effect of somatic symptoms between perceived social support and health-related quality of life among North Korean defectors living in South Korea. METHODS A total of 200 North Korean defectors were assessed using the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, the Short-Form 8-Item Health Survey, the Patient Health Questionna...