Clinical Impact of Systematic Assessment and Psychoeducation ... of Adolescents with Severe Functional Somatic Disorders:... 2023 Hansen Kallesø et al

Full title: Clinical Impact of Systematic Assessment and Psychoeducation in Specialized Treatment of Adolescents with Severe Functional Somatic Disorders: Results from the AHEAD Study

Abstract

Functional somatic disorders (FSD), characterized by persistent and disabling physical symptoms, are common in adolescents. Diagnostic uncertainty and insufficient illness explanations are proposed perpetuating factors that may constitute barriers for treatment engagement.

This study describes the impact of manualized assessment and psychoeducation on diagnostic certainty and various clinical outcomes in adolescents with multi-system FSD. Ninety-one adolescents (15–19 years) received systematic assessment (4 h) and a subsequent psychiatric consultation (1.5 h). Clinical characteristics included self-reported physical health, symptom severity, illness perception, illness-related behavior, and psychological flexibility assessed before and approximately two months after assessment, prior to specialized treatment. Data were analyzed using t-tests. Immediately following assessment, 71 (80.7%) adolescents out of 88 reported a higher diagnostic certainty and 74 (84.1%) reported that attending assessment gave them positive expectations for future treatment.

A clinically relevant improvement of physical health was not observed at two months but considerable reductions were seen in symptom severity, illness worry, negative illness perceptions, illness-related limiting behavior, and psychological inflexibility. The results emphasize that systematic assessment and psychoeducation are important in their own right in the specialized treatment of adolescents with severe FSD.

Open access, https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9067/10/7/1101

 

How is it possible to have a "considerable reduction" is symptom severity without a "clinically relevant improvement of physical health"?

It sounds like terrible research that revolves around first introducing bias through "psychoeducation" and then intentionally failing to control for nonspecific effects, and then pretending they are treating some kind of disorder.

That's how you arrive at these contradictory results.

 

These people are doing a great job making those children never trust doctors. They can bullshit them with their "illness explanations" all they want, and have questionnaires asking a bunch of useless questions, but all the children will learn is that doctors are willing to bullshit without any shame.

And yeah after making everything about "illness perception", they don't even care that it has zero effect on the illness, which contradicts their whole model. This is perverse and immoral.

 

Yes these kids will end up hating psychosomatics once they become more mentally independent.

 

Not just psychosomatics. Doctors aren't supposed to lie or BS. Ever. Most people believe that until it happens to them, and then they never forget about it. It's a hidden problem because we can't do anything about it, but I see regularly lots of it on general discussions having to do with healthcare where this pops up unprompted. In fact in most discussions there's quite a lot of it. Not a huge % but it's still way too much for something that should never happen. There A LOT of people who have had terrible experience with healthcare.

The joys and pitfalls of a complete monopoly when your service is a life-or-death necessity, you can ignore all feedback, mess up routinely, and never want for business. If anything, the biggest problem in healthcare is precisely way too much demand. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the biggest factor in misery in modern society. And we'll see just how significant once medical AIs become available.

 

Do these people not realise that adolescents are particularly fond of telling people what they think they want to hear to make them go away.
It's that basic