Abstract
Symptoms such as pain, weakness, fatigue and sensory disturbance often lack a disease explanation. Such symptoms can be a major problem for both doctor and patient, often challenging the way in which we conceptualise and practise medicine. Symptoms are the patient’s subjective experience of what is occurring in their body. By contrast, doctors are trained to find diseases such as multiple sclerosis that offer an explanation for these symptoms. When there is no disease present it becomes tempting to suggest that the symptom is not real or psychogenic. However, symptoms appear for multiple reasons, including physiological factors, psychological factors, behavioural response and cultural and social factors. For some patients disease pathology is a major factor in causing symptoms but in others it appears to be minor or absent entirely. A patient does not have to have a disease in order to have genuine symptoms.
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© 2012 Alan Carson and Jon Stone
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Carson, A., Stone, J. (2012). Symptoms Unexplained by Disease. In: Agrawal, N., Bolton, J., Gaind, R. (eds) Current Themes in Psychiatry in Theory and Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230317062_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230317062_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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