Mail online article, by Roger Dobson, 20 March 2017: Why doctors can no longer dismiss symptoms as ‘all in the mind’: Experts reveal medically unexplained conditions can still have a physical cause
- In as many one fifth of cases, doctors find no explanation for patients’ symptoms
- Though the symptoms are real, they often end up being told it’s all in their mind
- Now, experts reveal these are signs of a new condition, bodily distress syndrome
For patients who have no obvious physical cause for their symptoms, trying to get a diagnosis or effective treatment can be a nightmare.
It’s a common problem: in as many as one in five cases, doctors find no explanation for a patient’s symptoms or for their severity.
Though the symptoms are real, patients can end up being told it’s all in their mind.
This will ring all too true for many with conditions such as chronic fatigue, fibro-myalgia (characterised by widespread pain and fatigue), irritable bowel syndrome, unexplained chest pain or interstitial cystitis (not caused by infection).
Not only do these problems, known as functional disorders, cause misery, but they cost the NHS a fortune.
Treating medically unexplained symptoms cost £3.1 billion a year, more than stroke or heart disease.
But research suggests these different diagnoses are all types of a single illness, bodily distress syndrome (BDS) — a new condition that’s just been included in the draft of the next World Health Organisation’s International Classification of Diseases, the diagnostic bible for doctors.
A study in the British Journal of General Practice last year, based on 1,400 patients, found around 17 per cent would meet the criteria for BDS.
The term is used to describe medically unexplained symptoms, and recognises illness has roots in the body and mind, paving the way for new treatments for many patients who may have been told symptoms were ‘in their heads’.
