A multicenter study of bodily distress syndrome in Chinese outpatient hospital care: prevalence and associations with psychosocial variables 2022 Ma

Abstract

Background

Bodily distress syndrome (BDS) is a new, empirical-based diagnosis of functional somatic symptoms. This study aimed to explore the prevalence of BDS and its association with psychosocial variables in a Chinese clinical population.

Methods
A multicentre cross-sectional study of 1269 patients was conducted in 9 different Chinese tertiary outpatient hospitals. The BDS was identified by trained interviewers face-to face, based on a brief version of the Schedules for Assessment in Neuropsychiatry (RIFD) and the BDS Checklist-25. Sociodemographic data and further information were characterised from psychometric questionnaires (The Patient Health Questionnaire-15, the Patient Health Questionnaire-9, the General Anxiety Disorder-7, the Whiteley scale-8) .

Results
Complete data were available for 697 patients. The prevalence of BDS was 26.8% (95% confidence interval (CI): 23.5–30.1). Among the participants, 5.8% (95% CI: 4.1–7.6) fulfilled the criteria for single-organ BDS, while 20.9% (95%CI: 17.9–24.0) had multi-organ BDS. Comparison of the PHQ-15, PHQ-9, GAD-7, and WI-8 scores revealed higher scores on all dimensions for patients with BDS. In a binary logistic regression analysis, BDS was significantly associated with increased health-related anxiety (WI-8) and depression (PHQ-9). The explained variance was Nagelkerke’s R2 = 0.42.

Conclusions
In China, the BDS is a common clinical condition in tertiary outpatient hospital settings with high prevalence, and is associated with health anxiety and depressive symptoms. In this clinical population, the severe multi-organ subtype of BDS was the most frequent.

Open access, https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-022-04342-y

 

I don't know why, but I always find the use of the word 'distress' in a medical context to be demeaning and insulting. It always makes me think of fainting, crying women in Victorian melodrama.

 

Just a fancy way of saying "trust us, we're experts". Which is not valid. People don't trust experts just because they're experts. It's systems of expertise built on science that are worthy of trust. A skilled profession without science is just a guild, or a trade lobby. It's science that matters, the rest is politics. And none of this mumbojumbo has anything to do with science.

I especially don't like how medicine is destroying trust in all experts. Most professions don't have wishy-washy nonsense, or our own brand of pseudoscience. I'm this close to demanding not to lump us experts in other professions with this lot because we just straight up don't do those things. It simply has a different meaning.

But this is really extremely bad for trust in experts, which will keep reaching new lows for a while.