Characteristics of 200 patients with somatoform pain disorder

Abstract

Abstract Background Patients with somatoform pain experience physical pain, that cannot be attributed to any underlying medical or physiological cause, and it is often thought to be related to psychological factors. Health professionals encounter difficulties identifying this specific type of chronic pain, leading to suboptimal treatment strategies. Therefore, we aimed to describe the characteristics of patients with somatoform pain, to support the identification of affected patients. Methods We collected and analyzed data of a multicentre cross-sectional study from 200 patients with somatoform pain admitted to psychosomatic centers in Germany between July 2013 and Juli 2014. The survey contains ten different categories, all of them referring to pain related topics. Here, we present the following five: Personal data, Body: Pain perception, Cognition: Pain processing, Pain behavior, and Physical complaints. Results Our results highlight that most of these patients experience persisting pain in several body parts, which lasts > 12 hours/day (50%), and is constantly changing (71%). Furthermore, patients indicate feelings of helplessness by agreeing to expressions like "the pain is controlling me" (70%). Finally, we found that pain is recognized less in a symbolic way, but predominantly seen as suffering by the patients, despite cognitively acknowledging the dependency of emotional and physical pain. Conclusion The study identified specific and distinctive characteristics in the emotional and behavioral responses of patients with somatoform pain, potentially distinguishing them from other patients with chronic pain and helping clinicians to identify these patients.