Psychosomatic Medicine

This field of study closely examines the relationship between the body and the mind. It studies the impacts of internal factors on bodily processes. It combines knowledge from psychology, psychiatry, neurology, biology and psychoneuroimmunology 1. It investigates to what degree the psyche influences the body. It is not solemnly human affair, for example experiments showed that rats react to certain mental stimulus similarly like men. Although psychosomatic medicine is quite a new terminology, its roots dates back far. Towards the end of the very first century there were discoveries made in the medieval islamic world.

People were wondering if there's a reason for mentally ill people to tend to become ill also physically. Connections began to be clearer later. There are few names associated with passing on the true significance of psychosomatics to the world. Franz Alexander, Hungarian psychoanalytic; Helena Flanders Dunbar, an American 'Mother of the Holistic medicine'; or Robert S. Woodworth, an important American psychology text book writer 2. All these people helped the body&mind relationship to get a voice prepare a presentation or report on an issue of public concern relatedto the care profession. Whereas Alexander established an own psychoanalytic institute in Chicago, it was Mrs.

Dunbar who really worked with all her panties in holistic way and didn't hesitate to call her attempts 'psychosomatic'. Everybody interested in psychotherapy must be familiar with Sigmund Freud. Although he was the father of psychoanalyzes, which many took as a template to a certain degree, psychosomatic disorders are of a more complex nature, and are indeed holistic in the onset of their treatments. Later, I will proceed with mixed responses that this approach have brought. It is not so simple to diagnose what dysfunction in the brain might have caused certain defects on the body.

Such factors are usually uncovered step by step very slowly. Nowadays there are already proven connections that fit most of the time for a particular problem. Let's say that one has a problem with a lower back pain, or headaches. The scholar of psychosomatic medicine can be quite sure it is to do with a stress. Then we have another question, 'What kind of stress? '. Therefore individual approach must be constructed given the patient treated. Not surprisingly, there are still people out there who do not believe in holistic approaches in medicine.

People still wonder how can something like stress break their backs. However, those are exactly the patients who need to undergo a psychotherapy to open their minds. We cannot eliminate external factors, for example: colleagues, classmates, annoying people in the line in coffee shops, traffic jams, but we can certainly do something about our way of perceiving things. We can raise the threshold of our mind 3 . In the past centuries all the disciplines sort of interlinked themselves before being specifically formed.

Now Psychosomatic medicine leaves the therapy to other specialists, especially to behavioral medicine. The main focus became identifying the underlying cause of an illness or discomfort, making a connection, and pass on the proper diagnoses so treatment can be effective. Perhaps the most popular journal online is psychosomaticmedicine. org by American Psychosomatic Society published since 1939. It covers various issues that are currently on the table in America. Some articles are free to read or listen to. One record focused on the spreading of obesity lately.

That alone wouldn't be such news, however, there have been found new relationship between this health threatening physical problem and the viability of neurons in the brain. Certain mechanisms might be impacting cognitive function. Researches are wondering if that could lead to dementia in later life. Would that still fall into the field of psychosomatics? Many studies were also done by Norwegian psychologists Asbjorn O. Faleide and Lilleba B. Lian. In their interesting book Symptom and meaning: Modern psychosomatic approach, they examine the issue of eating disorders in bigger detail.

They are mainly interested in the first-hand reasons for Obesity or Anorexia. In all their described cases the common factors are obvious. The roots to this disorder lie within the subject's family. No matter if the family deals with money issues, divorce, infidelity or own self-esteem problems the child can feel it and he/she needs to react. Often times they cannot express his/herself, so they protest. There are two ways to be heard 4 . One is 'Look, I'm unhappy, I'm eating junk, because food is the only think that cares to fill the hole inside me, and make me happy.

' Usually these people grows into such measurements that their cry for help can be finally seen, and then treated. The second way is to refuse food. Children think the conflicts are thanks to them, due to the fact that they were born. They think they don't deserve to live. They refuse food in order to kill the pain inside as soon as possible. From these cases it is usually hard to get back from. Anorexia is sometimes in such an advanced stage that it's impossible to reverse it. That's why it is essential to observe it in time. Faleide and Lian's experiments with rats were also remarkable.

Two groups of rats were fed the same amount of food at the same time. Rats from a smaller birth-toss, used to enough of food available at all times, ate much less in compare with rats from a bigger birth-toss, which were used to fighting for food before. Those rats ate like crazy and couldn't get enough. Thus this group put on weight. It is not just obesity that we set on for in our minds. Irritable bowel syndrome is another psychosomatic disorder, as well as fybromyalgia, sleep disorder, high blood pressure, and ulcers 5 . Scholars argue that it is difficult to classify such abnormalities as of purely psychosomatic origin.

As with the case of the internet journal above, their finding about obesity suggests to me that one cause leads to another. The physical ballast is probably bound to create dementia even without additional stress factors. The science studying the influence of the body on the mind is then a different field altogether. The case of Anxiety for example also originates from certain stresses, yet panic attacks are mostly the products of the body which are involuntary. The symptoms like discomfort, heat, trembling, palpitations come at absolutely inadequate times when one is actually not enduring an unpleasant situation.

It is the body's reminder there are things to be dealt with, not forgotten. Such physical symptoms inevitably produce more stress and fear that they are going to re-appear at anytime. From such reactions of the body the mind gets hurt even more. Thus we can conclude that the focus of psychosomatic medicine can be arguable and it will always be interlinked with other disciplines as well. We can no longer be hast in diagnoses and treatments as the history keeps changing and new discoveries are born every day.

Some scholars of medicine still fear that the current hype about causing our own illness in our minds is a commercial move for spiritual practitioners to gain from. Much money very invested in Alternative therapies and personal life coaches. The influence of the mind may or may not be exaggerated. There are several books to help us to understand the seriousness of psychosomatic as a medicine, one can be 'Illness as a work of Thought' from Monica Greco 6. Apart from enforcing the link between mind&body, she also touches upon the vulnerability of one's mind to media spurs at the very beginning of her book.