Bookby Robert W. Baloh.
Summary: Despite the rapid advances in medical science, the majority of people who visit a doctor have medically unexplained symptoms (MUS), symptoms that remain a mystery despite extensive diagnostic studies. The most common MUS are back pain, abdominal pain, headache, fatigue, and dizziness. This book addresses the obstacles of managing people with MUS in our modern day society from both a historical and contemporary perspective. Most MUS are psychosomatic in origin, caused by a complex interaction between nature and nurture, between biological and psychosocial factors. Psychosomatic symptoms are as real and as severe as the symptoms associated with structural damage to the brain. Unique and concise, the book explores the biological and psychosocial mechanisms, the clinical features, and current and future treatments of common MUS. Exploring the unsolved in an accessible manner, Medically Unexplained Symptoms invokes the methodologies of medical science, history, and sociology to investigate how brain flaws can lead to debilitating symptoms.
Contents:
Chapter 1. Overview of Medically Unexplained Symptoms
Chapter 2. Early Ideas on Hysteria
Chapter 3. The Golden Age of Hysteria
Chapter 4. Psychosomatic Illness in the 20th Century
Chapter 5. Biological Mechanisms of Psychosomatic Symptoms
Chapter 6. Psychosocial Mechanisms of Psychosomatic Symptoms
Chapter 7. Low Back Pain, Abdominal Pain and Headache
Chapter 8. Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Chapter 9. Chronic Dizziness
Chapter 10. Treatment of Psychosomatic Symptoms.