Affective dysregulation and sex differences in somatic symptom disorder: A 6-month longitudinal and mediation analysis 2025 Park et al

[Andy]

Highlights​

• SSD patients exhibited greater reductions in somatic symptoms over 6 months compared to controls.
• Somatic symptoms were related to anxiety and trait anger, particularly in females.
• An interaction between anxiety and trait anger contributed to symptom severity.
• Reductions in anxiety and alexithymia were linked to improvements in somatic symptoms.

Abstract​

Objectives​

Somatic symptom disorder (SSD) is characterized by persistent physical symptoms and excessive emotional responses, but the influence of emotional factors such as anger and alexithymia on symptom severity and course remains unclear. This study examined whether baseline levels and six-month changes in emotional factors are associated with somatic symptom severity and course in SSD, considering sex.

Methods​

Eighty-three SSD patients and 80 age- and sex-matched healthy controls completed self-report measures of emotional and somatic symptoms at baseline and six-month follow-up. Changes in symptom levels were compared between patients and controls. Emotional factors associated with symptom severity and change were also examined. Linear mixed models, multiple regression, and Bayesian mediation analyses were employed.

Results​

Compared to controls, the SSD group showed significant improvement in somatic symptoms over six months. Trait anger was significantly associated with somatic symptom severity in females, and an interaction between anxiety and trait anger predicted symptom severity. Within the SSD group, reductions in anxiety and alexithymia were significantly associated with symptom improvement. Mediation analyses supported indirect pathways between affective change and symptom reduction.

Conclusions​

This prospective study highlights the contribution of emotional dysregulation to both the severity and course of somatic symptoms in SSD. The findings emphasize the relevance of sex differences and emotion-focused mechanisms in symptom maintenance and improvement, supporting the need for tailored interventions in SSD treatment.

Open access

 

[Amw66]

And perhaps question why females are angry ... it's not rocket science.

 

[Sean]

This prospective study highlights the contribution of emotional dysregulation to both the severity and course of somatic symptoms in SSD. The findings emphasize the relevance of sex differences and emotion-focused mechanisms in symptom maintenance and improvement, supporting the need for tailored interventions in SSD treatment.​

It does no such thing.

They really have completely abandoned actually establishing causation, haven't they. It is all now just declared to be so ex cathedra.

 

[Utsikt]

This seems like a lot of effort to make correlation seem like causation.

If my rudimentary understanding or mediation analyses is correct, you need an independent variable. But I doubt any of the variable they used are actually truly independent. Are there ways to get around this issue?

 

[rvallee]

They really have completely abandoned actually establishing causation, haven't they. It is all now just declared to be so ex cathedra.

It's so much worse than this. They explicitly argue that the output is the input, just because it's what they prefer to be true, however absurd and comically unlikely it is. Which is tradition, and is even more absurd. They show significantly worse understanding of human nature than any of the major LLMs out there. Seriously. Robots have a better grasp of human psychology than this.

They also completely mix different concepts, talking variously about "emotional symptoms", which is not a thing, emotions are just that, emotions, but since they have decided that the emotions are excessive, they frame them as... excessive. The snake eating its own tail. But they are perfectly normal in the context, it's just that they reject the context. Which they are researching. This is so much more absurd than even the most woo pseudosciences out there, which don't make sense on their own, but at least are consistent within the belief system they operate in. Here literally everything is arbitrary, they respect none of the principles that the profession pretends to respect.

They oddly use the phrase "interaction between anxiety and trait anger", but there is no such interaction. This is not what the word means, they cannot establish any causality, let alone its direction. They're literally just asserting it. And of course they explicitly use the most unlikely relationship, showing how they literally understand nothing about what they are trying, and failing, to study:

Reductions in anxiety and alexithymia were linked to improvements in somatic symptoms

This is obviously backwards. It's always ever argued in this direction and this one alone. This "bidirectional relationship between mind and body" always ever flows in one direction and one direction only, the least likely direction, in fact one that explicitly makes no sense without having to invent a convoluted belief system around it, like water flowing uphill.

And the question about studies like always remains: why? Why do this? This isn't even research. It informs nothing. It's the intellectual equivalent of putting some people in cages and treating them like zoo animals for entertainment and money. Here they would literally argue that it's the lack of any form of education that put them in cages, rather than having been put in cages, for entertainment, and denied education and an otherwise normal life being the reason for being in that cage.

It's the excess. This isn't even just bad, it's so extremely bad there is only the worst of human experimentation and torture that matches its perversity and intellectual degeneracy.