The Hindu Business Line : <I>No such thing as a psychosomatic illness </I>

A stomach ache before a job interview, a headache before a party, or a weak bladder before an exam. Add to these problems, heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis and asthma, for all of which it is commonly believed that the cause may be `what's going on in our heads'.

It is not what we worry about that can make us ill, but the ways in which we worry, say Darian Leader and David Corfield in Why Do People Get Ill? (www.crosswordbookstores.com).

"Anxieties about health are fuelled by media stories that present readers with an increasing number of illnesses and conditions which they can suspect themselves of suffering from," frets the intro. It cites estimates that between 25 and 50 per cent of GP (general practitioner) visits are for `medically inexplicable complaints'; quite predictably, therefore, ``the most common diagnosis in general practice medicine today is non-illness''. There is no such thing as a psychosomatic illness, declare the authors. "No single major illness is exclusively caused by the mind, just as few illnesses will always be completely exempt from the mind's influence. What matters are the potential connections between mind and body."

Towards the end of the book, the authors observe that many aspects of conventional Western medicine are poorly suited to respond to human illnesses. "As the body has become more and more fragmented, and health services reduced to local applications of intervention and expertise, the individual has been lost in a vast maze of conflicting interests and misguided techniques." Recommended read, while you wait in the doctor's lounge.

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No such thing as a psychosomatic illness