BACKGROUND The Self-Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ) is a screening instrument that has been shown to be an effective measure of depression in postpartum women and is widely used in developing nations. METHODS The SRQ was administered to 2028 mothers from eight nations at two time points: one and six months postpartum. All data were obtained from the Interactions of Malnutrition and Enteric Infe...

BACKGROUND A number of different models have been used in order to explain the links between unemployment and ill-health. The objective of this study was to test different proposed models in an empirical setting. METHODS A cohort of school-leavers consisting of more than 1000 persons was followed for 14 years up to the age of 30. They have repeatedly been asked questions that could be used to...

OBJECTIVE Doctors find patients with medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) challenging to manage and some hold negative attitudes towards these patients. It is unknown when and how these views form. This study examines medical trainees' beliefs and influences about MUS. METHODS Semi-structured interviews with 43 medical trainees. Using an iterative approach, initial emergent themes were explor...

BACKGROUND Patients often present in primary care with physical symptoms that doctors cannot readily explain. The process of reassuring these patients is challenging, complex and poorly understood. AIM To construct a typology of general practitioners' (GPs') normalising explanations, based on their effect on the process and outcome of consultations involving patients with medically unexplaine...

Depression is a common mental disorder with various symptoms and often accompanied with unexplained painful physical symptoms. Patients, especially in primary care, often present only with somatic symptoms and depressed mood is overlooked. On the other hand, psychiatrists don't pay enough attention to somatic or painful symptoms in patients with depression. The connection between depression and...

This article explores key conceptualisations of ‘somatisation’, a term that refers to physiological symptoms without organic causes. A history dating back to Freud identifies philosophical underpinnings of a dualistic theorising of bodily symptoms and subsequent medicalisations of bodily illness, with recent elaborations on influencing psychological sources in somatic symptom presentations. Con...

Despite high comorbidity between depressive and somatic symptoms, cognitive mechanisms that transmit vulnerability between symptom clusters are largely unknown. Dampening, positive rumination, and brooding are three cognitive predictors of depression, with rumination theoretically indicated as a transdiagnostic vulnerability through amplifying and diminishing affect in response to events. Speci...

The aim of this study was to estimate the short term consequences of job insecurity associated with a newly introduced mobility framework in Greece. In specific, the study examined the impact of job insecurity on anxiety, depression, and psychosomatic and musculoskeletal symptoms, two months after the announcement of the mobility framework. In addition the study also examined the "spill over" e...

Hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness that comprises of heightened absorption in focal attention, dissociation of peripheral awareness, and enhanced responsiveness to social cues. Hypnosis has a long tradition of effectiveness in controlling somatic symptoms, such as pain. Pain, the most common symptom in clinical practice, is a multi-dimensional experience, which includes sensory-discr...

We determined the pattern and severity of symptoms in Turkish and German depressed inpatients. Psychopathological and somatic symptoms were documented on standardized rating scales of the Association for Methodology and Documentation in Psychiatry (AMDP) System. Of a total sample of 6000 inpatients admitted to the Psychiatric Department of the Free University of Berlin from 1981 to 1989, 28 Tur...