Somatization: a borderland between medicine and psychiatry.

Somatization is the tendency to experience and communicate psychologic distress in the form of somatic symptoms that the patient misinterprets as signifying serious physical illness. Patients with persistent somatization relentlessly seek medical diagnosis and treatment despite repeated reassurance that physical illness is either absent or insufficient to account for their symptoms and disability. Such abnormal illness behaviour leads to overuse of health care facilities and contributes to the high cost of health care. Somatization may occur transiently in response to stressful life events or it may be persistent and result in chronic partial or total disability. Diagnostic and therapeutic guidelines that may help physicians identify and manage such patients more effectively are discussed.