Some functional psychosomatic diseases of the gastrointestinal tract

Using a clinico-psychological method, 170 patients with functional psychosomatic pathology of the alimentary apparatus (functional dysphagia, neurogenic vomiting, gastralgias, the syndrome of the irritable large intestine) were examined. The study showed that these diseases manifested themselves after a considerable psycho-traumatic situation. In women, the role of the stressor was played by disruptions in familial relations while in men, job-related stresses were usually involved. Particular vulnerability of the gastrointestinal tract expressed in episodic dysfunction from early childhood was a predisposing factor in all observations. The personality characteristics of the patients (as judged from the data obtained by techniques of Taylor, Aizenk, M.H.Q., 'incompleted sentences' and the index of the stability-instability of marriage) are characterized by high anxiety, neurotism, depression, and liability to obsessive-phobic reactions. Comparison of the research findings with the relevant results obtained in an organic psychosomatic disease (duodenal ulcer) demonstrated that with further somatization of the affect, the above personality features tend to decrease. According to the data obtained functional psychosomatic disturbances progress to organicones only in 7.4% of cases.