Centre for Policy on Ageing



Attributions of physical symptoms in patients of an old age psychiatry service
Author(s)	Bart Sheehan, Michael Philpot, Sube Banerjee
Journal title	International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 17, no 1, January 2002
Pages	pp pp 61-64
Keywords	Mental disorder ; Depression ; Anxiety ; Ill health ; Symptoms ; Psychiatric treatment ; Southwark.
Annotation	Somatization is the tendency to report physical symptoms which lack an organic basis and which are presumed to have a psychosocial basis, and is a phenomenon found across all medical specialisms and in all types of care. The objective was to establish whether treatment for psychiatric illnesses would be accompanied by a fall in somatic attributions. Interviews with 41 patients referred to three old age psychiatry teams covering the south London areas of Peckham, Camberwell and Nunhead found anxiety to be the chief association of abnormal attributional style. In a follow-up with 29 of the patients, mean depression and anxiety scale scores and somatic attributions of symptoms had fallen significantly. Abnormal focus on physical symptoms in depressed older patients may resolve with treatment. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-020212216 A
Classmark	E: ENR: ENP: CH: CT: LP: 82LT
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing

...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.