Studies on the Psychosomatic Functioning of Ill-health According to Eastern and Western Medicine: 5. Psychosomatic Characteristics of Anxiety and Anxiety-Affinitive Constitution

Abstract

In successive studies of the pscyhosomatic functioning of ill-health according to Oriental and Western medicine in medical students, we established the existence of the psychosomatic characteristics we have provisionally terned the anxiety-affinitive constitution at the core of ill-health. Therefore, we conducted this research because our pervious investigation showed this constitution included a high complexity of respiratory movement and eye movement with a significant correlation to the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). We examined the correlation between the STAI and somatic function of 88 medical students to identify the psychosomatic characteristics of anxiety and the anxiety-affinitive constitution. These tests included STAI, fractal (EEG, EOG, plethysmogram, respiratory curves, and EMG) and non-fractal (accelerated plethysmogram) dimension analyses, and malocclusion (based on Angle's classification). In particular, EOG, plethysmogram, and respiratory curves are known to have close association with trait anxiety. We were able to discover the correlation between (1) trait anxiety and thoracic and abdominal respiratory movements, and malocculusion (Class III), and (2) the correlation of state anxiety with thoracic respiratory movement, horizontal eye movement, a plethysmogram and an EEG-Pz (in males only). In subsequent study the relation between thoracic dominance and state-trait anxiety and between abdominal dominance and state-trait anxiety should be assessed to develop this research regarding the psychosomatic characteristics of anxiety and the anxiety-affinitive constitution. Further, it is essential to create an anxiety-affinitive constitution index based on multi-regression analysis.