Somatic Symptom Disorder - What Should You Know?

Somatic symptom disorder is when you put so much focus on symptoms such as pain or fatigue that you have trouble functioning or experience severe emotional distress. You will be visiting the doctor a lot, completely unnecessarily and will waste a lot of money when you have no major health concerns. However, there are treatments, which can help you cope with this problem. Read further to find out what they are:

Symptoms:

1. Worrying excessively about an illness, which has not yet occurred
2. Frequent health care visits
3. Fear of physical activity damaging your body
4. Fearing that the evaluation of doctors is not adequate

There are many more symptoms, which may indicate that you are suffering from somatic symptom disorder. However, the most important way of telling whether someone is suffering from somatic symptom disorder or not is to see whether the patient is overly worried about a physical problem, which has not yet occurred. One of the first steps in making sure that this does not happen is finding out what causes the problem and preventing it. Here are the causes of somatic symptom disorder.

Causes: As with other psychological disorders, the exact cause of somatic symptom disorder is not yet known. However, there are a number of factors which may increase the risk of it, such as:

1. Genetic and biological factors: These as well as an increased sensitivity to pain are some of the factors, which you have no control over. 
2. Environment you grew up in: Just like the genes you have, the environment you grew up in and your family influence will have a major impact on whether you develop the condition as well.
3. Problems processing emotions: When people have problems processing emotions, their physical symptoms seem like a bigger problem than they actually are.

Treatment: Luckily, there are treatments for this disorder as well, which include.

1. Psychotherapy: Psychotherapy is the most common treatment used to help people with somatic symptom disorder.
2. Medications: Since depression and pain often occur when a person is suffering from somatic symptom disorder, antidepressants can be given as well.