BACKGROUND Gastrointestinal complaints are very common in the general population and very often co-occur with common mental disorders. We aimed to study the prospective impact of gastrointestinal complaints on long term sickness absence, and address the contribution from co-occurring common mental disorders and other somatic symptoms. METHOD Health data on 13 880 40-45 year olds from the Hord...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the value of pain catastrophizing in explaining pain, disability, and somatic complaints, beyond negative affectivity (NA). METHOD Two cross-sectional studies, one in a sample of school children (n = 193) and a second in a clinical sample of children with recurrent or chronic pain (n = 43), were conducted. In both studies, measures of pain catastrophizing and NA were ...

OBJECTIVES Neurovegetative and somatic symptoms (such as headaches, heart palpitations and dizziness) have a high prevalence. These symptoms are often indicative for 'masked depression' or 'depression without sadness', especially in older adults. At present, no instrument exists which enables the assessment of these symptoms. This study presents a questionnaire which assesses neurovegetative an...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the validity of the Ghent Multidimensional Somatic Complaints Scale (GMSCS) in a Clinical Sample. METHOD Three hundred fifty-four non-clinical subjects and 151 clinical patients completed the GMSCS, an 18-item five-factorial scale for the assessment of somatic complaints. RESULTS The five-factorial structure was reliable and valid in the non-clinical as well as the cli...

BACKGROUND Listening to natural sounds is applied in health contexts in order to induce relaxation. However, it remains unclear whether this effect is equally efficacious in all individuals or whether it depends on interindividual differences. Given that individuals differ in how they are impaired by somatic complaints, we investigated whether somatic complaints moderate the stress-reducing eff...

Somatic complaints are often key features of anxiety pathology. Although most measures of anxiety symptoms capture somatic complaints to some degree, the Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) was developed primarily as a measure of somatic symptoms associated with anxiety responding. We evaluated the psychometric properties and factor structure of the SAS in two large undergraduate samples who comple...

Somatic symptoms are commonly reported by psychiatric patients. Sixty consecutively selected patients with predominant presenting complaints of somatic (bodily) symptoms were assessed using the Scale for Assessment of Somatic Symptoms. Physical and psychiatric examinations were performed. Somatisation cases were more often from 26-45 years age group, higher education, married and from urban bac...

BACKGROUND The relationships among somatic complaints, emotion awareness and mood have been observed in late childhood and adolescence, but very few studies have been carried out in adult populations like this work. This study also incorporates personality dimensions that can exacerbate or reduce the emergence of somatic complaints. Therefore, the aim of this study is to analyse the combined co...

Background/Aims Somatization may influence persistence and severity of symptoms in gastrointestinal diseases. Some studies suggest that somatization is associated with chronic uninvestigated dyspepsia (CUD); however, the association is unclear. We aimed to determine the association between the profiles of somatic complaints with CUD and its symptoms. Methods In a cross-sectional study conduct...