Somatoform and Dissociative Disorders

Key points

• • In these disorders, psychological distress is expressed through the body or through the mind's sense of self, rather than as obvious emotional symptoms.
• • In somatoform disorders (now often grouped as somatic symptom and related disorders), the person has real physical symptoms, such as pain, that medical tests cannot fully explain.
• • The symptoms are not deliberately produced; the person genuinely experiences and worries about them.
• • In dissociative disorders there is a splitting-off of memory, identity or awareness, as in dissociative amnesia or fugue.
• • Both are often linked to severe stress or conflict, though the mechanisms are complex, and physical disease must first be excluded.