Do Patients with Somatoform Disorders Present with Illusory Mental Health?

Abstract

Background: Patients with somatoform disorders tend to report somatic complaints, while denying the influence of psychological factors: a pattern described as "illusory mental health". The present study investigated if somatoform patients present themselves in this way. In this context we investigated features of personality organization), selfreported personality traits, symptomatology, and coping.

Development and Case Study Application of a Proxy-Generated Outcome Measure of Suffering for use with Clients with Illusory Mental Health

“…In particular, Cousineau & Shedler (2006) highlight the limitations of self-report questionnaires and suggest that implicit measures have an important role to play in mental health research. Consistently, a Dutch study (Wineke, Eurelings-Bontekoe, Dijke, Moene & Gool, 2015) conducted on clients with somatoform disorders -who report somatic complaints attributed to an unexplained medical conditionunderlines how these clients tend to deny the influence of psychological factors on self-report measures, showing a favourable self-presentation which may be related to defensive denial that characterizes the phenomenon of IMH. The results of this study are in line with the increasing awareness that many psychological processes are implicit rather than explicit, and not accessible via selfreports (Shedler et al, 1993;Cousineau & Shedler, 2006;Westen & Shedler, 2007;Wineke et al, 2015).…”

“…Bringing further support to the usefulness of implicit procedures, the German study of Subic-Wrana and colleagues (as cited in Wineke et al, 2015) shows that among clients with somatoform disorders, low levels of emotional awareness -assessed with an implicit projective measure (LEAS) -are associated with a low level of impairments in self-reports. In this regard, Wineke and colleagues suggest that the utility of selfreport measures may be limited in clients who tend to describe themselves as overly positive among these instruments, such as those clients with somatoform disorders, and that future research should include observer ratings, complementary to self-reports.…”