Opinion Progress in understanding functional somatic symptoms and syndromes in light of the ICD-11 and DSM-5, 2023, Creed

[Andy]

It is over a decade since the new diagnosis of Somatic Symptom Disorder (SSD) was introduced in the DSM-5, and Bodily Distress Disorder was proposed for inclusion in the ICD-11. These new diagnoses were introduced to move away from the terms “somatoform” and “somatization”, which were thought to be unhelpful to patients and doctors.

It was also thought necessary to define these disorders in a positive way rather than as “medically unexplained” symptoms, an unsatisfactory term as doctors frequently disagree about whether or not a symptom is explained by a medical disorder. The new classifications aimed to rely more on the presence of definite psychological and behavioral features.

Open access, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wps.21118

 

[Sean]

The new classifications aimed to rely more on the presence of definite psychological and behavioral features.

And the assumption that they must be caused by psychogenic processes.

 

[rvallee]

This describes no progress whatsoever. It's the same old garbage that has been argued for well over a century. By their own admission, they only rebranded the labels, while changing nothing of the underlying constructs. Again. And again. And yet again!

Obviously this does not lead to progress, but they never needed progress anyway so why change a losing formula? They're just pretending that they're doing stuff, while being stuck in mental loops. Who is really mentally ill here?

The main difficulty with the “functional somatic disorders” classification is that it conflates two distinct, but overlapping, sets of disorders: one is characterized by a high number of troublesome somatic symptoms, and the other by a cluster of specific symptoms which fulfil the diagnostic criteria for one or more functional somatic syndromes (e.g., irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia).

Another study found that the predictors of self-reported irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia were mostly syndrome-specific, with only four predictors common to all three syndromes

Examining the mechanisms of symptom development in these subgroups may be more rewarding than doing so in the entire syndromes.

Having recently moved from working on those subgroups, widening to fully generic constructs like "medically unexplained symptoms", they are looping back again to pretending to work on specific syndromes, even as those efforts have become an obvious failure. Even as the broadening is becoming even more generic with the recent creation of "functional overlays", a magical "I'm right and you're wrong" card.

Smaller psychological and physiological studies are becoming more productive now that they are focusing on specific patient groups. It is reasonable to expect that our knowledge of somatic symptoms and syndromes will develop greatly over the next decade.

It's actually not, and there's literally nothing productive out of this pseudoscience. It hasn't made any progress in a century and a half, is always the same, and will never make any actual progress because this is all made-up BS that only ever fails upward, through political wrangling and a weak profession that is incapable of speaking truth to power, is terrified of pointing out how the emperor's naked ass was always completely and obviously naked.

Quacks and their quackery will keep quacking until they're made to stop.

 

[Sean]

Who is really mentally ill here?

And morally.