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Somatic Symptom Disorder

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Somatic Symptom Disorder
A Nature vs. Nurture Debate
By Jennifer Nguyen
July 3, 2015

The Disorder
While many mental disorders are well-known and commonly referred to, such as bipolar disorder, depression, and anorexia, one mental disorder that has less limelight are somatoform disorders. WebMD defined somatoform disorders as “mental illnesses that cause bodily symptoms, including pain” where these symptoms cannot be “traced back to any physical cause” and they are “not the result of substance abuse of another mental illness” (WebMD).
The Criteria & Associated Behaviors
In DSM-IV, somatization disorder was the major somatoform disorder. There were many criteria for this disorder. However, in DSM-V, somatoform disorders were largely replaced by the term somatic symptom disorder, hereon referred to as SSD, which DSM-V characterizes by “somatic symptoms that are either very distressing or result in significant disruption of functioning, as well as excessive and disproportionate thoughts, feelings and behaviors regarding those symptoms. With this new change in DSM-V, somatization disorder (previously in DSM-IV) is now completely removed and replaced. The previous diagnosis of somatization disorder required very specific criteria. However, the new criteria for SSD is not as specific, but it does state that “somatic symptoms must be significantly distressing or disruptive to daily live and must be accompanied by excessive thoughts, feelings, or behaviors” (DSM). To see brief comparison, see Appendix A.
As briefly mentioned, the basic behaviors associated with SSD include feeling pain or other somatic symptoms that are extremely distressing. It was previously stated in DSM-IV that there should be no medical reasoning for these symptoms. However, with the new revision in DSM-V, there is no need for the symptoms to be medically unexplained. In other words, DSM

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