Somatic Symptom Disorder

Somatic symptom disorder (SSD) is a recently defined diagnosis in the , fifth edition (DSM-5). It is the manifestation of one or more physical symptoms accompanied by excessive thoughts, emotion, and/or behavior related to the symptom, which causes significant distress and/or dysfunction. These symptoms may or may not be explained by a medical condition. The two major changes to the DSM-IV criteria included eliminating the requirement that somatic symptoms be organically unexplained and adding the requirement that certain psychobehavioral features have to be present to justify the diagnosis. The new criteria also eliminated somatization disorder, undifferentiated somatoform disorder, hypochondriasis, and pain disorder from the previous definitions. These revisions were intended to increase the relevance of SSD and its use in the primary care setting.