Psychosomatic diseases are various diseases of viscera and systems, whose onset and development are generated by psychological effects, protracted in their intensity and negative in their emotional content, painfully perceived by a person.
The interaction between body and soul, between mental and somatic factors in the structure of disease, was known and discussed by ancient physicians. Democritus (the 5th century B.C.) considered that the psyche could often cause diseases of the body. Plato (the 4th century B.C.) was convinced that madness (mania) began in many people due to a somatic disorder. M. Cicero (the 1st century B.C.) is considered by many researchers to be the first specialist on psychosomatic medicine; he expressed reasoned judgments about effects of grief, serious emotional troubles on human health and onset of bodily diseases from mental sufferings. Such ideas, which are in the core of the development of medicine and remain extremely relevant nowadays, confirm a need to take into account for any disease not only the somatic factor, which is surely decisive in therapeutic clinical practice but also psychic and psychological factors. This is valid for diseases of the cardiovascular system (hypertension, ischemic heart disease) and for diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, joint diseases, bronchial asthma (in Ph. Pinel's classification, asthma is considered to be one of the types of neurosis), thyrotoxicosis and dermatitis. Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa have been recently considered psychosomatic diseases.
CLINICAL PICTURE
Today it is accepted to differ psychosomatic reactions from psychosomatic diseases. The reactions can be present in healthy people, but they are not yet pathology in the full sense of the word, but they are present as (sporadic) responses of the body to certain stressful effects (for example, polyuria together with diarrhoea in case of strong excitement). Under certain conditions, such sporadic psychosomatic reactions can be the beginning of the psychosomatic disease.