BACKGROUND In response to changing reimbursement and other pressures in the health care environment, many physicians have reported the use of alternate coding to substitute for certain clinical diagnoses. However, very little information is available on how physicians who care for children approach diagnosis and coding dilemmas for behavioral and mental disorders, which often present unique add...

OBJECTIVE To analyse the influence of socio-demographic characteristics and environmental factors on self-reported somatic and psychological symptoms among middle-aged Swedish women. METHODS A total of 6917 women living in the Lund area of southern Sweden were participates of this study. They completed a generic questionnaire pertaining to socio-demographic characteristics, lifestyle factors ...

OBJECTIVE To examine whether school absenteeism is a perpetuating factor of functional somatic symptoms and whether this holds true for bullied adolescents. STUDY DESIGN This study is part of the longitudinal population-based study Tracking Adolescents' Individual Lives Survey. Data from assessment wave 2 (n = 2149; 51.0% girls; mean age = 13.65, SD = 0.53) and assessment wave 3 (n = 1816; 53...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to examine relations among parental responses, adolescent pain coping, and pain behaviors in adolescents with chronic pain. METHODS This study included 217 adolescents (12-17 years) evaluated at a multidisciplinary pain clinic and their parents. Adolescents completed measures assessing their pain, pain coping responses, functional disability, and somatic s...

This study examined characteristics associated with mildly injurious (fingernail biting, skin picking, etc.) and more injurious (cutting, burning, etc.) self-harm (SH) in an undergraduate sample (N = 280); 31% reported mildly injurious SH within the past 3 years with no more injurious SH, whereas 20% reported more injurious SH within the past 3 years. SH was not associated with significant gene...

Some evidence suggests that West Indian immigrants in Canada are a marginalized and over-burdened group. However, little attention has been given to examining health status and beliefs. We partly redress this gap by investigating health beliefs of West Indian immigrants in Montreal with somatic, emotional, or medically unexplained symptoms. The overall aim was to elicit and explore illness narr...

We assessed risk factors affecting the provisional diagnosis of medically unexplained symptoms made by physicians in new patients, in 526 clinical encounters. Comparisons were made between the doctor's initial assessments regarding the nature of symptoms, and the final diagnosis. Physicians were more likely to err on the side of diagnosing the symptoms as medically explained rather than unexpla...

OBJECTIVES To describe the development of the Symptoms and Perceptions (SaP) questionnaire, a new instrument measuring diversity and severity features and related perceptions of non-specific (physical and psychological) symptoms (NSS) and to test its reliability and validity within an epidemiological setting. METHODS First, a Delphi study was performed to develop the items of the questionnair...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of levomilnacipran extended-release (ER) on depression-related fatigue in adults with major depressive disorder. Post-hoc analyses of five phase III trials were carried out, with evaluation of fatigue symptoms based on score changes in four items: Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) item 7 (lassitude), and 17-item Hamilton Depressi...