Anxiety Disorders and Stress Q 30
Situation: A 30-year-old male employee frequently complains of low back pain that leads to frequent absences from work. Consultation and tests reveal negative results. The client has which somatoform disorder?
A. Somatization Disorder
B. Hypochondriasis
C. Conversion Disorder
D. Somatoform Pain Disorder
Correct Answer: D. Somatoform Pain Disorder
This is characterized by severe and prolonged pain that causes significant distress. Pain disorder is fairly common. Although the pain is associated with psychological factors at its onset (e.g., unexplained chronic headache that began after a significant stressful life event), its onset, severity, exacerbation, or maintenance may also be associated with a general medical condition. Pain is the focus of the disorder, but psychological factors are believed to play the primary role in the perception of pain.
Option A: This is a chronic syndrome of somatic symptoms that cannot be explained medically and is associated with psychosocial distress. Somatization disorder is a mental disorder characterized by recurring, multiple, and current, clinically significant complaints about somatic symptoms. It was recognized in the DSM-IV-TR classification system, but in the latest version of DSM-5, it was combined with undifferentiated somatoform disorder to become somatic symptom disorder, a diagnosis which no longer requires a specific number of somatic symptoms.
Option B: This is an unrealistic preoccupation with a fear of having a serious illness. Illness anxiety disorder (IAD) is a recent term for what used to be diagnosed as hypochondriasis, or hypochondria. People diagnosed with IAD strongly believe they have a serious or life-threatening illness despite having no, or only mild, symptoms. Yet IAD patients’ concerns are to them very real. Even if they go to doctors and no illnesses are found, they are generally not reassured and their obsessive worry continues.
Option C: Characterized by alteration or loss in sensory or motor function resulting from a psychological conflict. Conversion disorder is a mental condition in which a person has blindness, paralysis, or other central nervous system (neurologic) symptoms that cannot be explained by medical evaluation. People who have conversion disorder are not making up their symptoms in order to obtain shelter, for example (malingering). They are also not intentionally injuring themselves or lying about their symptoms just to become a patient (factitious disorder). Some health care providers falsely believe that conversion disorder is not a real condition and may tell people that the problem is all in their head. But this condition is real. It causes distress and cannot be turned on and off at will.