Review Intensive Short-term Dynamic Psychotherapy for Functional Somatic Disorders: A Scoping Review 2025 Abbass & Haghiri

Objective: Functional somatic disorders (FSD) are extremely common amongst neuropsychiatric and other specialty medicine referrals. Intensive Short-term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) is an emotionally focused form of brief therapy that has been researched and developed specifically for the diagnostic assessment and treatment of FSD, amongst other conditions.

Method: In this publication, we review the ISTDP theoretical underpinnings, the diagnostic assessment, treatment approach and evidence base.

Results: There are now over 50 publications evaluating ISTDP and its effect and processes in FSD. It has been demonstrated efficacious for the spectrum of functional somatic disorders, including chronic pain, functional gastrointestinal disorders, and functional neurological disorders among others. It has further been found more effective than cognitive behavioral therapy in the treatment of chronic pain. Further there is evidence that it is cost-effective in treating these conditions.

Conclusions: ISTDP is a broadly useful clinical tool in the assessment and treatment of FSD.

Open access

 

As expected, no mention of risk of bias or any form of assessment of the quality of the evidence. It is a textbook example of garbage in, garbage out.

 

Anyone else noticed the language shift over the last few years on prevalence? It went from uncommon to extremely common in maybe a handful of years. Today there's another paper that said something like "every clinician sees many such patients regularly".

Just don't look up count.

 

What does it say about the value of treatments being called 'efficacious', or effective, when massively overhyped pseudoscience is also labeled this way.

Basically, this:

 

Who was it who explained it as the idea that health care should have first-line biopsychosocial triage, where no one is seen "medically" first, but instead go through a process where they assess potential psychosocial cases before it gets sent to actual clinicians? All to remove unnecessary burdens on health care services. Which ironically would add a significant burden, extra costs for zero actual gains.

I think it was Sharpe. In the history of ideas, very few ideas have ever been as bad as this. I'm sure RFK Jr would love this idea. Very big savings, lots of business opportunities to send people to for-profit "work well to get well" camps.